Tough Decision

Sorry for ghosting y’all. I’m still here. I hope you are, too. I needed to pull away from everything to figure out what the f*ck to do. I left my husband. It’s been an incredibly hard time. I did the hardest part; I left. However, I realize there’s a lot more hard parts to come. The act of leaving was painful and a decision I didn’t take lightly. As you can imagine, this wasn’t a split decision made in the heat of a moment. I’m not that girl. This has been building for a very long time. Looking back, I can tell you 2011 -2013 was when the tethers that bound us started to pop loose. I hung in there hoping for things to get better. And they did. Intermittently, that is. Enough good moments peppered in to make me hope for the best. Enough to make me fight for us. Over the last two years, I’ve felt the cancer in our relationship grow bigger and stronger. The doubts seep deeper into my soul. The fears of retiring with him grew. The thought one day we would have MORE time together & LESS distractions became scary. The thought that he would be the one to take care of me when I was sick became unsettling. He acts begrudging anytime I have a simple sinus headache, how will he act when it’s something more serious? Every conversation is an arm wrestle. He has to disagree with anything I say, no matter how trivial. If I told you how long it’d been since we’d been intimate, you would wonder what we were doing hanging on for so long. It’s because I wasn’t sure what was the symptom and what was the cause. I was trying to peel back the layers and get to the bottom of it all. That’s hard to do when his only communication skills are intimidation tactics. When you can’t be vulnerable with someone because they bully you, the communication starts to die. When you can’t communicate, what’s the point? I grew increasingly more fatigued with the fight for us until I had no more fight left.

Since leaving almost 2 months ago, I have not missed him. I don’t miss the constant negativity, seemingly unending irritation and anger. It’s so nice to not be woken every morning with a cursing tirade over something that’s not worthy of being rattled over. It’s refreshing to not share space with someone who’s on the verge of loosing composure at any given moment over any given reason, valid or irrational. I don’t hate him. I don’t think he’s a monster like he says I do. What I believe is he is ill. He needs medication to balance his moods. I suspect he is depressed and quite possibly has a manic form of depression. It’s the only thing that seems to explain how his anger can burn for days, weeks, months or even years (2011-2013 was horrible for us). He, however, doesn’t think anything is wrong with him. In fact, he’s absolutely certain I’m our only issue. If I’d stop acting up, we’d be wonderful. It’s demented and I’m tired of the emotional and verbal abuse.

I’m no angel, let’s get that on record please. I am very aware I have faults. I’m willing to look at myself honestly and assess where I need to improve. I’m open to hearing how I affect other people. I’m willing to take responsibility for my actions and take strides to be better. Unfortunately, he was not so willing.

I’m going North. It’s up from here. I mean, not straight up. Certainly, there will be ups and downs. I say it’s up from here because I can’t even cry over us anymore. I’m burnt. I can cry over ASPCA commercials, Publix holiday commercials, heart warming stories, beautiful or touching moments. I can not cry over my marriage. I’m numb.

I’m scared to go it alone. I am. But here I go again on my own. Just like Whitesnake did in the 80’s.