Late at night there was a knock on the door… It was him and he wanted to talk. He looked like shit and it made me wonder how someone who-apparently- lacks the ability to feel anything could look so bad if that were true.
“I think I do love you… I have to… Otherwise I wouldn’t feel this shit…would I? I’ve messed up… I AM messed up… I’m so confused. I think I love you but I don’t KNOW that for sure, I don’t know WHAT I feel.. Or if I feel at all. Maybe I’ve blocked things, maybe shit did happen when I was young and it really has messed me up. But I’m not sure whether I’ve felt shit for the past few hours because I don’t want to lose you – and therefore might love you or because I feel guilty knowing that you have no where to go, you’ve given up so much to be with me and now you have nothing”
I was stunned and gutted but strangely hopeful at the same time. I told him to take that thought out of the equation or imagine I had everything I wanted or needed back in my home town and to take some more time to think it over.
The next week is a blur, I literally ran on autopilot and lived on mocha and caramel lattes – I wasn’t purposely starving myself but the thought of food made me feel sick, in fact I was physically sick through the shock of it all. I wasn’t hungry and it was only when I googled the effects it would have on my body that I forced myself to have some goodness each day. I continued seeing our counsellor by myself, I asked him if HE had known something was off with us since day one… If it was just me who had been fooled… He said no. He hadn’t seen it coming, he had thought there were some issues – otherwise we wouldn’t have been there but aside from the ones we had spoken about he was as shocked as I was.
My husband had returned every night for the first few days, either to get something he had forgotten, to drop something back or – on the third night just to talk. He asked whether IF he decided to work through this with me I would still want to be with him and how it would ever be ok… I told him I would be there for him, but I wouldn’t be walked all over and that it would take a lot of work to get us back to any kind of normality. we would 100% need professional help, both together and separately, we would need to build the trust back from scratch, he would need to be honest and I would need to get to know the “real” him… I would need to live the “real” us… And only then would I know whether I could stay or not.
After he left I had some more time to think and thought you know what… Fuck therapy right now, if that’s what has scared him off and he’s not ready to face his demons today then forget it for right now. All I really needed to know was whether he loved me (thought/hoped he could/wanted to) and wanted to be with me or not… THEN we can go from there. So I text him:
‘OK one last text and I will leave you to it, I’m not going to guilt trip you or anything but I’ve thought about what you just asked me… I think all I would need for us to sort this out is to know that you do love me. Fuck therapy and stuff right now, although I feel it would help both of us and there are definitely issues which need to be dealt with all of that can be addressed later, if I knew you loved me that would be a big enough starting point. THATS what you need to be thinking about. I love you and I always will xx’
I didn’t hear from him for the next 4 days and in that time the reality – and heartbreak- set in. Was that mornings kiss really the last time he would ever tell me he loved me? What if he came back and said no? What if this really was the end of us? I couldn’t stand it, it made me sick. I have history of attempted suicide and had vowed to never ever do that again but my god how I wished I could just curl up and literally die… Die of a broken heart and that way it wasn’t a selfish act, it wasn’t my doing… It was just proof that I couldn’t survive this heart ache.
I did survive though, and I could survive longer because if I’ve learned anything from my past it’s that even when you feel THAT low, when you feel like you can’t take any more… You do. You take it and you kick its ass! You get through it… Somehow. My “somehow” was “denial”. I refused to believe he couldn’t feel anything, he had cried at a film once, I had seen him look like shit… He has been shaking whenever I had seen him on those few days…Besides, believing it would mean I would have to accept that none of our past, none of our memories.. our special things… our wedding vows and the photos that made me so happy to look back at… None of it was real.
xBx
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