Get Real

Well, it’s not like I was fooling anyone anyway.  If you have any clue at all, you’d guess that I wasn’t really talking about gardening. I didn’t really think I’d fool anyone, it just seemed easier to step back a little and recolor the truth so it didn’t hurt so much to look at.

You can recolor it all you want, it doesn’t change it’s foundation.

It’s 12:27 am … and I’m here writing because up until 30 minutes ago my husband was still awake and I couldn’t bear to go to bed when he was still there.  I waited and waited for him to go to sleep… but he kept coming down here and wandering around in a lost kind of way, in his BVDs and his messy bed head, like a little boy who needs his mommy.  I couldn’t help but notice the sweetness even as my stomach tightened and my breath shortened and my hands fisted up in my lap.

I keep trying to remember all the adoration and respect, all the sensual passion and deep seated love I have always felt for him… and I do remember it, but I remember it as then, and not at all as now.  It sounds so trite doesn’t it? That I’ve maybe “fallen out of love” with him.  How ridiculous, because any married person with any integrity will tell you that the passions of love come, and go, but it’s the care and love and respect that hold it together during crying infants, meetings with the principal, and arguements over the Visa bill.  And so, I think, that it’s not so much I’ve fallen out of love, as that I’ve lost the vital parts of respect, care, concern.  That is so painful to say. 

It’s entirely possible, with all due respect, that all this shit is my problem to begin with.  I’m the one who is mostly unhappy, I’m the one who is mostly wanting out, I’m the one who actually left.  I’m the one sitting up waiting until the other is asleep.  Maybe it is all me. 

And even if it is, there is a time for realizing that as shameful and degrading as it may feel, my truth is my truth and if I can’t be honest, then I can’t be at all.

All of which is fine and dandy to set my thoughts upon until I imagine the anger and betrayal my boy12 will feel. I see his cheeks flushed, the skin around his eyes tight and pale. I see that he won’t look me in the eye, nor will he release the well of tears pooling in his lashes.  He won’t bend, soften, give mercy, or forgiveness.  He is my son, my man, my buddy.  I don’t know if I could stand that distance, and the knowledge that I built it by myself.  I imagine my girl10 and her bewilderment.  I wonder at the conflicted turmoil in her heart because she really doesn’t quite comprehend why mommy left.  I think about how she needs me to physically tuck her in, to smooth her hair back from her brow, to kiss the fleshy peachy cheek of hers with it’s galaxy of freckles.  How she needs to touch me, whisper to me, hold on tighter and longer every night.  And my girl18… she barely got this far with me along, what will happen if I’m gone?  She’d never forgive me either, although she’d pretend. 

I can ruin one life, my own, but I can’t ruin three lives of helpless bystanders. 

Or can I?

I pray.  I pray.  God, take this feeling from me.  I refuse this satan driven selfish emotion…

… and it only grows stronger.  I know that God does NOT want this thing for my family, but I also truly trust in Him to mold me and shape me, and to do the same for my children, in the way that He sees fit. 

I wish we saw eye to eye.

This isn’t Kansas, Toto!

I say, I can’t breath! I can’t THINK! I can’t even sort out which way is which and I lose all sense of reality when we do this!

The hysterical rabid tone of my voice is weird to hear, as weird to me as is his twisted grimace of contempt.

I say to others, I love him, I do! He is my best friend, my partner… all I want is to be with him… only not like this. I can’t.

The desperation and tears are oddly disconnected from the words.

I am home in a weird surprised way. I wake him and tell him to come to bed.  In the pitch black storm flattened night, we both clamber into our bed, under our sheets, under our down comforter and atop our individual pillows – down for me, polyfil for him.  We automatically assume our standard positions but in the blink of a sigh we turn away, not in anger, but in respect for the broken hearts that lie between us.

I am gone again in the morning. Rushing off to help, heal, save, salvage…to empty our pockets in the never ending attempt to heal this world we live in.  He is angry again. Let down again. Abandoned again.  He is worried and fearful and anxious under the self rightious pride. 

I call, he snips, I end the call. 

He calls, I ignore the call.

He sends a cryptic text message and I choose to ignore it.  Thinking only instead, of the deep night sky, the shush of tires on the road, the cool air blowing in from the vent, and the thought of endless peace. 

I sleep very little.  I imagine he does too, based on the text message that arrived somewhere around 1am.  I replied in kind… and then tried to sleep more, fitfully dodging “thoughts” and “future” and even “tomorrow”.  The baby wakes and is sick and wailing and inconsolable.  I think that if I were in MY home, I could walk around, use the bathroom, get her some juice.  But I am not.  I am in a basement that smells faintly of cat urine and the cedar scent of a partially created wine cellar.  I am here, and not wanting to wake up my host and I’m so tired… and I can only think: blanket, pillow, sleep.  Blanket, pillow, sleep.  Blank -

In the morning he is angry to see me.  Words fly like arrows, flashing like hummingbirds, biting like mosquitos. In the face of his rage all I can see in my minds eye is the pile of clothes I’d stacked on the ironing board, the toiletries I’d gathered in the wicker tote, and the baby that was sleeping downstairs. 

I hear his words, I can almost almost almost understand them… but his twisting and sarcasm and dry wit overpower me attempts and I become stereotypical… whining, crying, weak.

He leaves.  I stay.  He calls… and I answer.  Why?

Because.

He says, “come, then. just come.”

 I say, “why? why now and not a week ago?”

He cannot answer and just says, “come”

I say I will. Of course.  And I do… getting into my car and driving to where he has driven himself and in the back of my mind I think, darn it, now there is only one car and if I leave he won’t have any way to get help if he needs it, if the kids need it.  I’m stuck

We speak tenderly and carefully, softly, hushed.  We speak in carefully formed translations of our heartbeats.  I drive, he sits.  I try not to hit the bumps but I can’t help it… and there is secret awful shameful pleasure in every single bump I blast over.

In my head I am still planning on leaving.  In my heart I want to go – but it is my obligation that makes me stay.  My standard, “what if… and I wasn’t there?” voice in my head snarking at me.  I stay.  Finally breaking down before dark time and putting on my pajamas.  I accept the beer he offers and the realization that I am staying here sinks in uncomfortably. 

Uncomfortable because I don’t really want to stay… but I’m too lazy and complacent and tired to leave.  The arguing and fussing, the faces he makes and my inexhaustable tears, the torment and trauma of it all is too much. I’ve already been there and done that… I can’t do it anymore.

I drink my beer, here at the computer. He is there, with his.  We exchange polite pleasantries as the hours pass.  Finally, oh finally… He goes to bed and I can take my first full inhale of the day.  Finally I can relax my shoulders, stop clenching my jaw, stop gnawing my nails.  Finally I can rest.

But sleep avoids me.  She darts out of reach every time I think I’ve got her in my grasp.  Yes, sleep is a woman.  Sleep, she is a bitch!  I cannot catch her because, after all, this isn’t my home.  This is unfamiliar territory.  This is ME wanting something… and not automatically caving in, and being able to find justification for my reasons, and shaking my head dismissively at myself.  Stupid lazy cow.

I cannot sleep for the whirling hurrican in my mind, the violent tornado in my heart… and the unmet deepest desire to get away is frolicking in my spirit, erasing the last vestiges of The Holy Spirit and It’s power, hiding over the pureness of my forgiveness with it’s cloudy selfishness, and yet illuminating me under a spotlight for my God to see.

This.. isn’t… my life.  This is… someone elses life. 

And then I hear the thump skweeeeeek of him getting out of bed and walking across the hardwood floors.  I hear the shshh shshh shshh of him walking on the carpeting in the hallway and the thud skweeel of his feet on the stairs and every cell in my body tightens, cringes, deflates.

He stands and stares at me.  Yep. This is my life after all.  Him standing and staring while I am doing and going.