Day 105
For the past two weeks, I have watched this love that deeply invaded my heart and soul and mind spiral into something I couldn’t imagine. I watched the man I love with all my heart turn into someone and something I couldn’t recognize. I watched life show it’s presence and just as quickly die away. I watched everything fall apart. Every single little thing that had made me believe that this was the truest love story every known became incredibly painful to recall. We lost us. We lost life. We lost our future.
And I may never, ever know why.
There’s been hundreds of text messages over the past few weeks. Understanding. Honesty. Pain. Sadness. Forgiving. Unwilling. Anger. Love. Regret. Hope. The emotional rollercoaster my heart has experienced is beyond anything I’ve ever lived through.
But about anything, I’m loyal to a fault. I was here, with an open heart, and open arms ready and willing to accept whatever he gave me, whatever he brought to me, whatever he sent my way because I promised to never give up on him. I promised to stay by his side through it all and love him harder and stronger despite the pain he might inflict with actions he’d done out of fear or being scared. That was my promise and I expected to keep it, fully, honoring all the words I’d said from Day 1.
Even with all that, he couldn’t stay. He didn’t want to stay. He didn’t want to admit the truth. He didn’t want to let me all the way in. He didn’t want to be found out. He didn’t want to try anymore. He was done. He loved me, he would say over and over and over again. But he’s not good at relationships and his whole life was a sham and he was a bad person and he wasn’t right in the head.
And even though I knew all these things to be true, it didn’t stop me from wanting to fight harder. Even after talking with his sister and finding out many things from our early conversations through the present were complete fabrications, I stood there, tears streaming, arms open, mind and heart free of judgement waiting for him to come running to me so I could help him past these small issues because in the grand scheme of it all, it wasn’t those untruths that made me fall in love with him. It was simply the feelings that my body experienced while being in his presence.
Yet, just as quickly as our love had burst into my life, it imploded in the same fashion. All of a sudden, it was different. I still had all the feelings of love and joy in my heart but he wasn’t around anymore to give me his. He was done. It was over. He had moved on.
So today, December 13, I told him he had to look me in the eyes and tell me he didn’t want to be with me anymore because up until this point, that hadn’t been said. We were still sleeping in the same bed, had been a few places with the kids, together, as a family. It was rocky but we were managing, I guess. But today, he finally pulled it together and said he couldn’t be in the relationship anymore. He didn’t actually say he didn’t want to be with me, just that he couldn’t do this anymore. I took that beautiful made for my hand ring off my finger, put it back in the box, along with all the paperwork, and gave it to him to return to JBR. My love story was over. He was losing his job so turning the ring back in was the right thing to do, I supposed. But I cried handing it back to him. And I cried as he walked out the door with it.
And there I was, standing there, open arms and open heart, waiting for him to come running back to me.
