Day 1

My new reality

[The words in italics are from my real-time journal.]

The man who sat on our back porch on Day 0 was not the man I’ve been in love with for 16 years. I presented my view of things with a calm but emotional tenor. Not anger—just sadness. Grief. Disbelief.

While he sat stoic. Poised. Like he was giving a work presentation to a room full of strangers and not ending our love story.

I felt betrayed. Hurt. Like I had once again failed myself for trusting this man wholeheartedly. For believing him every time he told me he loved me and always would.

I am an idiot. I am so angry that I let myself get here.

He kept talking about how he felt “today” and needing to be his “authentic self.” Apparently, that’s something he can’t do with me. I told him I was worried because this was such a sudden change. “I think there’s something wrong in your brain,” I said. He shook his head and insisted this is how he’d been feeling, but had to stop “faking” things for his own sake. His counselor told him he needed to tell me all the things he had been telling her.

What were those things? I am trying to remember.

The big thing was that we were all moving in different directions. That he never thought we would get here and never wanted to get here. But here we are. That I had not been listening to him for a long time. That he was tired of having the same conversation without change. That he had been unhappy “for a while,” but couldn’t tell me when it started.

I started Day 1 throwing up. I don’t know how. I only had a banana yesterday. Maybe it’s the gatorade I chugged before bed, trying to replace some of the dehydration I caused by the gallons of my tears shed in grief.

Or maybe it’s disgust at myself. At what my life has become over the course of a few days.

The woman I was just days ago is dead. Unceremoniously strangled with hands she once held and kissed and loved.

I spent a lot of the night and morning choking on the truth: This man I loved beyond everyone else no longer loved me the same. Told me—told my son—that he had “fallen out of love” with me at some point. “I love you, but I’m not in love with you and haven’t been. And I can’t fake it anymore.”

What were the repeated conversations he was talking about? The only one I could think of was about the 17-year-old being messy. What did I miss? How could I have forgotten? I was so in tuned to him, knew his mood changes before they happened, how did I miss what was happening???

I have no idea where I’m going to go from here. My body hurts like I’ve been beaten or run over or some combination. Every muscle, joint, and bone aches. My head is a thousand times heavier than my body, and yet doesn’t seem attached at all.

How is this my reality? How did this man, who swore that I would be the one who walked away without a fight if we ever ended, just end us like this? I had no choice. Counseling wasn’t an option. I was discarded, like nothing I ever said or did or believed or wanted mattered. Like I never mattered.

This is a dark place. I’ve been thrown into a Class 5 rapids fully dressed and I forgot how to swim. My body doesn’t have the capacity for movement. I can’t fight against the current, and really, right now, I don’t want to. I want it to take me underneath until I can’t come back up.

Maybe he’ll regret this. Maybe he’ll miss me. Maybe now that I’m drowning, he’ll come back and throw me a lifeline, tell me he was wrong—that he was lying—that he does love me the same way I love him. That he hasn’t been faking it. Is anyone really that good at faking love? He had me fooled.

Shame on me.

I am so angry at myself. So fucking tired and exhausted and overwhelmed. I need rest. I need rescuing. I need my husband back so my heart can stop bleeding; so my soul can stop aching. He ripped his bond away and threw away whatever part of me remained with him. He burned down our house while I was still in it.

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