It isn’t simply that I am eating misery, and little else, for breakfast, lunch and dinner these days, but also that it is eating me.
From the moment I gain consciousness in the morning, the awareness that the fact that the life I had been living so happily is over, gone for good, forces itself down my neck and I snack on that revolting bile in a day-long venture in hell. I keep waiting for it to slack off, but that hasn’t started happening yet, and although somedays are less densely packed with anguish and anxiety, many come with the full force of the first minutes.
I am more able to see the weak links in my husband that led to his total and complete betrayal, but remain baffled by the turnaround, its speed and its cruelty, and my lack of understanding may be part of what is blocking my healing.
The “How could he do this to me and our family?” question haunts on a minute-to-minute basis, and although on some level I realize that his horrid choices and worse behavior have nothing to do with me, it’s seems only womanly to attempt to find some blame to carry on my shoulders.
What it is about us, the females of our species, that needs to claim faults not ours, to apologize for foibles merely human, to gather guilt over the fact that humans age and occasionally lose focus and are sometimes not in the chipperest of mind sets? Where does it come into our consciousness that it is our responsibility to keep the ship afloat, to be ever-vigilant, to anticipate every reaction to any action; then to look inwards for our failure when our men decide that all their thinking will be done with their little heads, not their big heads, and that nothing else matters in any case?
Because Mark was so good at giving the impression that he was the happiest married man on earth, wedded to his best friend, continually conversing on every topic … except, of course, the one that was mattering the most to him at the time; how to keep his girlfriend happy … I am still reeling from the shock of my supposedly solid ground suddenly falling away.
Should I have seen this coming, even though he freely admits that he gave no hints, no clues, no reason for suspicion? Or is this just another way I beat myself up?
I know that it’s grief I’m dealing with and that there is no short road away from it. Getting on with my life, moving along, adjusting, are all goals, but it is consuming, from the hole in my heart, to the steady diet of regrets, to the loss of so much hope and so many dreams, I can’t yet see what will be left of me.
A collection of my short stories:
I'm in this one, too ...
And I'm in here, as well ...
Paradise Preoccupied 