I'd said it a few times jokingly. People would tell me it's time to move on, time to forget about my wife and move on. I'd half laugh and tell them "Then what? I don't have anything better to do but pine over her." I have no job. The kids visit me for a few sparse hours here and there, but hardly enough to fill my day. Somewhere deep down I knew our feelings for each other had irrevocably changed ... but I still wanted that all American dream family and the only way to have that perfect dream was to stay together. But couldn't happen anymore. She finally managed to hurt me in a way I knew I'd never get past. Just like that ... all those hopes and dreams and fantasies were gone. I had nothing to pass the time anymore. I was lost and aimless. Void of direction and motivation. Perhaps I should have told her I was done right away, but I felt like I owed it to her, to myself, to our kids, to the fourteen years we spent together to make sure that's what needed to happen. I gave myself a month, if I didn't change my mind, then I'd start moving on, planning for the future with out her.
Then out of no where, a mere day later, I met someone, if you can call it that. I messaged a random Facebook friend who was someone I went to High School with, but barely remembered, out of sheer boredom, due to all the extra time on my hands without spending my entire day pining over my wife. We chatted for a few hours. The next day it was a ten hour conversation, the day after seven. I'm alone and depressed, and I was smitten but still aware that my gauge of social situations was way out of whack. I knew that even the slightest bit of attention I was likely to blow completely out of proportion, so I tried to keep it friendly. By the end of fourth day and another six hours of conversation, she made it perfectly clear my social gauge, at least in this situation, was not off and she was interested. The challenges were plenty though. The timing was only slightly less than terrible, but I told myself, that's when you find it, when you're not looking for it. She also lives two hours away, back "home" near my parents. Not a big deal, just means for the time being, we could only see each other on weekends. Weekends we didn't have our kids, and our weekends with kids weren't in sync.
So I took a gamble. I asked my wife to trade our weekends. It sounds like a big sacrifice for a stranger, but in reality nothing actually changed for me, other than when I see my kids. I'd take them two weekends in a row, then back to trading. She hymned and hawed on it for a while, but in the end she agreed without condition. Then she asked why I wanted to trade. As I'd do a few more times in the near future, I answered with a truthful, but woefully detail free answer. "It's hard to spend time with friends when we have out kids on different weekends."
Should I even call her my wife anymore? She is still legally my wife. Doesn't feel like it though. We haven't lived together in eleven months. Calling her my ex-wife isn't technically correct, although it does capture the sentiment. Estranged wife and soon-to-be ex-wife both just seem to be too grandiose. It took me a month to make the adjustment from calling her my friend to my girlfriend. It took three months to make the adjustment from girlfriend to fiancée, and about five from fiancée to wife. If it takes six months to adjust from wife to the next appropriate title, then I guess that's okay.
It's slightly less than three weeks until my first first-date in fourteen years. I continue to talk with the new girl daily. Instant messaging, texting and phone calls daily. Anything less than four hours a day was disappointing. We're electronically attached at the hip. Every day we grow closer and I tell myself, and my friends, that I'm aware it'd be totally crazy it is to have feelings for someone you haven't seen in seventeen years and really only know online, but since she felt the same way, it wasn't crazy. She told me she she wanted to be "my sunshine." When I told her people were noticing how much happier I was lately she said she liked that she was the reason for my happiness. When I had a job interview she told me she was proud of me. I can only remember one other time anyone ever told me they were proud of me, and that was my mother after my daughter was born. The new girl also told me that she thought we could fall in love. I told myself my isolation and loneliness were amping up my feelings beyond what was normal and sane, but then she would say to me exactly what I was thinking, so it somehow didn't seem crazy. Boy, I was falling and I was falling hard.
The next three weeks went by with near constant communication with the new girl, and regular grilling from my wife. She'd ask me, "so who's the new girl posting on your Facebook page?" "Someone I went to high school with." "Are you dating her?" "I haven't seen her since High School." More questions, more truthful, but inaccurate answers. It was never like I was being asked these questions maliciously, or out of jealously. If anything they were asked with the same Cheshire cat grin she used to give me when she knew I was lying about having nothing planned for her birthday or anniversary. It wasn't like I didn't want to tell her either. I wanted more than anything to share this new, sudden joy in my life with the person who had been my best friend for a decade and a half. I couldn't do it though. But just having this happiness in my life made everything better. Made it feel like things were starting to come back together again.
Date night came and by then expectations were insanely out of control, and I knew that. There was enough of a real contact there that it felt real, but not enough to keep imaginations in check. I knew that when she opened the door and we first laid eyes on each other that time wasn't going to stop and the rest of the world wasn't going to cease to exist. We spent Friday night together and most of Saturday before I headed back home with unspecific plans for another date in two weeks.
Sunday we talked as we normally did. Monday I was barely able to get two words out of her, but didn't think much of it as her kid was sick, and I knew she was preoccupied. Tuesday was the same story and when my wife dropped the kids off that day she asked how my date was. I'm not sure who told her, but it didn't matter. I told her it went well. She pressed for more details, but I told her I didn't want to discuss it with her. Same Cheshire cat grin.
By end of the day Wednesday I was a wee bit concerned. Having spent hours and hours each and every day talking to her, going to barely a dozen text messages over three days, I missed her. So I sent her a message and told her that I knew she was busy with the sick kid and I understood why she was being not as interactive as she had been, but I missed talking to her. Two days later I hadn't heard back so I sent her an email saying "I know you've been preoccupied with the boy, but I'm not sure when I'm supposed to go from politely giving you space to taking the hint you're no longer interested." That was Friday.
My wife dropped the kids off for my weekend and she could tell I was upset, and asked me why. I didn't want to tell her. She pressed and I folded. I told by former best friend I was being ignored by a woman I had fallen for. It was strange and awkward and painful. She offered some vague words of encouragement, but nothing she could have said would have improved the situation. I'm fighting back tears and I'm not even sure which reason they're there.
Monday night, I decided for one last try. I sent an email telling the new girl it was obvious to me I was being ignored, but I had no idea why. I asked for at the very least an explanation. In my mind she was now on the clock and had twenty-four hours to respond. I send the email and almost instantaneously I was unfriended by her on Facebook. At least that was some sort of backwards acknowledgement.
The next day, I had heard nothing, it also happened to be my self imposed one month deadline on my decision to end the marriage. The irony wasn't lost on me. If I wasn't sure before, I knew then. Whatever the relationship was with the new girl, it was over, and it didn't send me running back to what was once comfortable, what was still a standby. Maybe I had nothing else to do, but I wasn't going to stew in my self pity over that failure anymore. I gave my wife the letter penned a month ago the next time I saw her. It's over in every sense but the legal one.
My life didn't fall apart. I had momentum. I did lose some of it, but I didn't fall to pieces. I started putting dishes away one day and thought to myself how much I hated the way the silverware drawer was organized. For some reason my wife always insisted it be, from right to left: knifes, spoons then forks, even though the middle slot in the organizer was flat, with a prong type shape suggesting fork, and the one on the end was rounded suggesting a spoon. So I fixed it to the way I wanted, the way I thought it should be. Then I rearranged the dishes and relocated the microwave. It was stupid and superficial, but I hadn't felt that empowered in a long time.
I started going out of the way to pack up her stuff. I'd avoided it previously. If I found something in need of putting away, instead of putting it away I'd pack it. Now it was an active effort to clear it out. I'm rearranging and cleaning. I go through the family photos and divvy them up. I expected that to be a painful experience, and while not joyful, it wasn't as terrible as I thought it could be. Yes, every picture since we'd been married had been digital, so it was copied onto a hard drive for her months ago. But photos from when we were dating and our wedding weren't difficult. Only one photo got to me enough to knock me off track. One I forgot existed. We were at a friends wedding, not even aware our picture was being taken and we were dancing. She's looking up at me and I'm looking down at her. You can't see our faces because of long hair, both hers and mine, but you can see how much in love we once were just by our body language. I remember that moment and how it ended when the tornado sirens started going off. I didn't keep a single printed picture with her in it, except that one.
Then out of the blue, ten days too late, I get a text from the new girl. "Hope you are doing well. I feel like you were trying to use me to be your excuse to act happy. You obviously are a nice guy but I don't want a significant other." What?!?
First you told me you thought we could fall in love. I'm sorry if I thought that meant there was a possibility for a relationship. Second, you made me happy, and that's a bad thing? Isn't that the whole point of dating? To find someone who makes you happy? It was such a terrible rejection line any feelings I thought I had for her were gone instantly. Obviously the wonderful, warm, caring person who I thought I had gotten to know didn't actually ever exist. I was tempted to ignore it, but since I was so peeved and her blowing me off, I felt the least I could do was respond. "As you wish" was my reply. She then told me goodbye and "good luck with your marriage." What ... In ... The ... Blue ... Hell!?!
I told her goodbye, but only to make sure I got the last word.
The next day my daughter calls me and invited me to go out to eat with her, my son and wife. After checking with my wife to make sure this was okay with her, I agreed. During dinner she asks me if I ever heard back from the new girl. I tell her about how the new girl didn't like that she made me happy. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard" my wife tells me, as I nearly choke on General Tso's chicken laughing. It's the first thing we've agreed on in months and the first time we've been out to eat with the kids in at least two years where we didn't want to kill each other when it was over with. It wasn't quite peace at last there, but it was a step in the right direction.
It's not that I want to be with her. She deserves happiness. It's that I don't want her to move on. It's that some day she'll meet someone, if she hasn't already, and that person will possibly be "on the clock" as a father to my kids more than I can be. That kills me. That's the thought that makes me sick to my stomach. I don't get a vote in that decision. I don't get a say. Just the thought makes me ill.
That's down the road, though. In the present, I still needed to get control of my life though. The job thing still was largely out of my hands. Make too much on unemployment to replace it with a minimum wage job, but nothing in my field seems to be hiring right now, same story as the past year and a half plus. So I rearrange stuff around the house. I purge this tomb to a failed marriage that I live in, slowing converting it into a fortress of solitude ... my fortress of solitude. It feels good, it's liberating and empowering. However, I do now have a pile of paper boxes piled to the ceiling waiting for her removal. I email her reminding her every time she drops off the kids she needs to take at least one bag or box of her stuff. Just for good measure I tell her I'm not paying her car insurance anymore and that'll we'll each be claiming one kid on our separately filed taxes. Perhaps on a little self empowered power trip.
She shoots back that we're filing jointly. We go back and forth on the issue until we both give up and said fine we'll do it your way. The next day, we actually discussed the issue I reminded her that I had paid no taxes in my unemployment checks. She says she remembered that and was trying to help me out. I don't understand, but okay. So I start digging up my info to file. I log onto the unemployment website to download the tax form. I decide while I'm in the system I ought to figure out when the last of the ninety-nine weeks worth of extensions kicks in so I know when to start panicking.
I find the info on the first four extensions, but not the last two. I can't find the information on the last twenty weeks of unemployment extensions. I look, I dig and quickly surmise that the last time congress voted to extended the unemployment extensions, they didn't extend all of them. Which means my unemployment runs out in ... four days. I am royally fucked. I'm such a fucking idiot how the fuck did I let this happen? How the fuck did I miss this.
Forget the taxes, I need a cash and I need it quick. I'm applying for every job I can find, fast food, retail, otherwise. I'm selling anything I can part with on eBay. I never should have packed her stuff. I should have just sold it all. If she hasn't needed in the past eleven months, she hasn't missed it, and as far as I'm concerned I've given her every chance to take anything and everything she wanted, so if it's still here, it's rightfully mine now, and I'm just giving it to her to be nice. But now she knows it's all packed and "hers." I'm fucked, I'm just royally fucked. I thought I had twenty weeks to find a job I have four days. Fuck. Fuck! FUCK!!! I may find a job, but I may never get to see my kids if I do. I finally accept my house as not my prison, but as my only asset and not I'm fucking that up too. Why do I always fuck up like this? At least I have no one to disappoint but myself anymore. I'm alone. I only have my life to fuck up right now, no one else's. Fuck.
This is my life now.
