As I Sit Waiting for my Alcoholic Breakfast Drink to Arrive

As I sit waiting for my alcoholic breakfast drink to arrive, my wife of only a year and a half (that is how long we were together, not how old she is) is with her family and respected moving the boxes of her items from our shared living place into cars.  Last night was, in all likely probability, the last night that we will ever sleep under the same roof as man and wife.  This excuses any unforeseeable (but bloody fucking likely) moments of loneliness that the two of us should need to visit and express our physical needs against each other.  However, as a blessed union, we are no longer.

It was my call.  It was her fault, but it was my call.  Of course, since I am the one saying this, it is going to be her fault.  That’s the way it goes, isn’t it?  But, ultimately, I made the decision that we should no longer be together because of the way I was being treated.

It is hard to put together all that contributed to that decision in a way that makes them seem more than petty, which makes me feel like maybe they were sometimes.  But, after a year and a half of it contrasted against a few major things that had happened, a picture gets painted of two miserable people contributing to each other’s delve into madness.

After our first miscarriage, a light started shining on all of the underlying issues of our relationship.  I was a model of fucking support when we both stared at the monitor that was supposed to show our first child’s heart beating but instead showed a lifeless undeveloped person floating motionless in what once had sustained it.  I made the calls I needed to.  I was waiting on her hand and foot.  I provided emotional support, kind words, encouragement, and did not once breakdown in front of her in an effort to keep her strong.  One week after it happened, and she had gotten to a point of somewhat normalcy, I went two floors away, buried my face in a few pillows, and screamed my fucking face off for about half an hour – that being the first time I let myself even tear over what happened.

That is how it worked, though.  In order for me to go through anything, I at first needed to make sure that she was completely okay.  And then, I needed to keep it as minimized as possible.  The reason for this torture is because if I felt any other way than just completely in love with her and showing it, then it would instantly mean that there was something wrong with her or something I was trying to pull over on her.  From her perspective.  If I stubbed my toe on something and either made a face from pain or cussed about it, her instant reaction would be that I was upset with her about something…even if everything was fucking hunkey-dorey.  Finding out this pattern early on put me to the conclusion that not expressing myself at all was easier than having to deal with a psychotic woman in the process.  And, I mean “psychotic” with as much love as can be applied.

Anyway, once we were clear of the original impact of the miscarriage, we got to the point where we were trying to assign blame or find an excuse why things happened in our minds.  There is no way around thinking about…absolutely none.  But, and this I expressed to her and talked to her openly about, if we started obsessing over it or started blaming each other, then it would toss us down a well that we would probably not be able to get out of.  So, of course, she got to a point where she started blaming me and making connections with how I lived my life that could have contributed to loosing it.

You could probably assume all of this, but when someone goes through something as horrific as this, they are filled with self-doubt and misery.  Half of what they are doing is blaming themselves for everything, whether the excuses make sense or not.  It hurts like nothing else hurts.  What helps is having someone else there who can take you out of that state and shine some light that these things just happen sometimes.  You need someone to say that it is better that this happened earlier than later, where there could be more complications.  You want someone to remind you that nature has a way of sorting this out, and that if what was growing was not growing correctly that it would be better to start again then what consequences could become.

You do NOT need someone to vocalize to you your worst fears.

We could not predict that later, after our second try at a child and thusly our second failure at producing life, the doctor would tell us that there was a hormone imbalance in my wife specifically related to carrying a child and was the cause of our heartache.  So, when I was laid into about how much I drink, my physical healthiness, contributing to a stressful environment, or any of the other inane accusations that were thrown at me to mean I caused this pain, I was put over the edge.

There is nothing I can think of to describe the blow that it made.  I was hurting more than I had ever hurt in my life…thinking about all the time and care to pick out the best stuff for our child, or sitting at her stomach reading the books I had picked out, or finally feeling like everything good and bad I had done up to that point was for them and finally worth it, that what my life was for was finally happening…then seeing the miniature lifeless body floating there in front of you, and having the one person you have deemed to support you through life unrealistically BLAME you for it…I…there is a certain part of you that dies at that point.

That is an example of how I was treated using an extreme of events.  I could spit about all the times she has prompted me to have friends and to go out, only to get us into fights of jealousy afterwards that I had any time or moments with anyone else.  I could point out that she has had almost complete freedom from bringing in any decent money from when I supported her to go to school for cosmetology, but failed out of the actual job with things got tough.  That her solution then was to work part-time at a department store at which she sneakily spent most of what she would have brought in on clothes.  That she spent the rest of that money staying out until all hours of the morning at bars and restaurants with her friends, or else going on trips and mini-vacations.  That she never wanted long for anything, if it was an expensive piece of technology or really any random thing.  That she spent so little concern for the two puppies I had gotten for her that one of them, even YEARS later, growls at her when he is lying with me and she DOES want to pick him up.  That her family gets treated to dinners, gifts, and calls for every little event, but she can’t even get a father’s day card in the main in time for my father.  That she insists to the point of extreme arguments that she take care of all finances, travel plans, food, and almost all of the general upkeep of our home, but still bounces our accounts, pays bills late to where we get disconnect notices, did not stock enough food in the house even though I couldn’t leave to get any (no car at the time), was latent on getting plane tickets or hotel reservations I needed for work, left our place mostly in smelly shambles, and then blamed me for not doing my part…that she lost respect for me because she had to take care of the things that she fought me regularly that she should be the one to take care of.

Can you understand why I drink all of the time, yet?

And then, when it comes to blaming me for the loss of our child and, after much fighting, the main thing that is agreed upon that I would consider not leaving would be for her to go to therapy…which she does…and then later admits that she didn’t want to tell her therapist the truth about things, and didn’t, because it would make her look bad…

…I’m breaking…

…and with her treatment of contempt for me for no reason, stating outright that she just cannot emphasize with me at all because she just isn’t built that way, even when I have to turn to her for support after finding out that I have a hereditary disease that is slowly causing my organs to fail and would require regular blood-letting for me for the rest of my life…

…I’m breaking…

…combine that with the loss of our second attempt at a child and all the time and support she got that I wasn’t allowed for that…with the lack of emotion towards me when she was the one to systematically drive everyone and everything else out of my life so that she is the only one I can really get emotion from…with the complete advantage she has taken of me and everything I have provided for her monetarily, physically, or emotionally…with the insecurity I feel with my job that even provides all of this, and not knowing if we can even have children, and the side effects from what I have been recently diagnosed with, and the destructive family that is all I have to turn to…

…I’m broken.

I had to make the decision that being with her was worse for me than being alone, or at least not being with her.  She could make promises (like she had and broken many times before) about changing and how sorry she was and how she just wanted to make me happy, but I had danced to that song before.  Even through our fights and discussions as the end and she begged me to let her stay…when I asked her what should was going to do to make things better for us, all she could come up with is that she would write in her journal more and hang out with different people.  Oh, and that she would stop lying to her therapist.

I can see the disappointment in her eyes when she asks me if I think we will ever get back together – that this separation will fix things – and I tell her that I had no hopes of us getting back together.  But, I don’t understand why she is confused that I am confused why she would think anything different.  I mean, I know I am telling this from my side and there are things left out and that I have been a tad dramatic with wording here and there…but, the message is true.  What is there, at this point, that she could possibly do that would make me want to go back with her?

I’ve really been trying to wrap my head around it.  I do love her.  I do want to be with her because of that.  I just refuse to be treated the way I have been, and she has blown every opportunity she has had to change or treat me any differently.  What can I do?  Or, is this just the bed in which I am laid?