A New Reality

I am caught off guard when people ask me where my husband is.  At parties, other people's weddings, concerts.  I used to answer automatically, back in the days when lying was second nature.  When we used to seamlessly convince people of our happiness.

Is it possible to become un-used to something?  Because now, spitting out the lie about him not being able to make it feels like a shoe that's half a size too small.  Uncomfortable. Painful.  A reminder.

It's incredible how quickly my mindset has gone from 'married' to 'single'. What on earth does that say about me? That being asked about him is a shock to the system?

I AM SINGLE

Hell, I'm dating now.  A little....no-one special. Some flirtation, a glass of wine here and there.  Am I ready? No-one is ever ready for anything.....who said that?

But the other day I woke with the saddest feeling.  A heart pain that started when I was still asleep, emerging reluctantly into reality. One question repeating again and again.

How can it be that we are not us anymore?

A new reality that needs a little wearing in.  

Beyond the Uncomfortable and after the Painful.........

......it might just fit.

Why now?

You broke my heart.

You married me, with the promise that you would love me completely, and forever.  But at the first big challenge that life threw our way, you stopped.

You were supposed to love me but instead you hurt me more than I ever thought was possible.

We couldn't have sex, I understand this was disappointing for you.

It was for me too.  I too had not factored this into my life plan.  When I conjured up my fairy-tale, there was no sexual dysfunction in it.  Nor was there a husband who would withdraw into himself, unable to support me while I systematically worked through my problem completely on my own.  I didn't choose this, any more than you did. 

Marriage is an agreement that two people make.  Part of that promise is that whatever happens, they face it together.  Detaching emotionally from the other person as soon as they prove to have a faulty part is not part of the understanding.

All those annoying habits I had that bothered you so deeply in that first 18 months.  The way I fiddled with my hair.  The way the shower was never quite sparkling when I cleaned it.  The way I became defensive when you criticised everything I did and tried to change me.  Those were all turned into character flaws......reasons why you couldn't love me.

It took me this long to see that all those things, all those flaws of mine that supposedly destroyed your love for me, they were just an excuse.  Your way of telling yourself that you weren't the bastard that fell out of love with his wife because she couldn't have sex with him. 

You did it subconsciously, not on purpose.  But knowing that is of little comfort to me.

That is why trying to work with me now, to make this separation an amicable one is of no significance.  That is why I cannot treat you like a friend.  If ever we were to work as a team, it should have been in that first 18 months, when it might have made a difference.

We could have conquered this together, as husband and wife.  We could have been drawn together by this, instead of apart. 

You could have.......should have....... loved me.

But instead, you broke my heart.

New Years Eve

                                                                           Photo Source

I was watching a movie the other day which ended with a pretty, young couple spending their first new years eve together, on a balcony, happy and in love.  It reminded me of that first new years eve we spent together.  On the terrace of his family home, surrounded by all of his cousins.  How I was making cocktails to go with the spicy peanuts his brother had made.  How we had set off fire crackers before the countdown, a cacophony of noise ringing in what was supposed to be the best year of my life.  Our kiss when the clock chimed midnight, vaguely aware of the many pairs of eyes on us, the besotted newlyweds.

The best New Years Eve of my life.

I thought there would be sadness......yearning.......longing.  I anticipated the pain, the tears welling in my eyes.  I waited for the flood gates to open.  I imagined there would at least be anger, at what we could have had, at what I had lost.

But there was only calm.  A thought that passed through my mind, unattached to emotion.  As if it were a movie I had seen, or a story I had heard.

It was then I realised.....the memories were there, they always will be.  Ready to bubble to the surface at the smallest trigger.

But the feelings are just about gone.

He had let go a long time ago.  And I......finally......was doing the same.

That day

I filed the papers on a Saturday.  
Four years ago, we had left the same city as newlyweds, buzzing with the strange cocky certainty that is reserved for those in love.

It was like another girl was sitting in the dusty courtroom with my parents, waiting to sign the papers that would sever my life for good from that of my husband.
Surely, it wasn't me on this government brown plastic seat, among these swirls of people.  No, those couldn't be my sweaty fingers clutching the green divorce papers that my husband had readily signed.
We weren't those people, the violent men and beaten wives........the unfaithful spouses......the marriages broken by meddling families. No, we weren't them. We had it all......compatibility, respect, a sense of humour. We got on incredibly well with each others families. There were no addictions, no physical abuse. Even arguments were few and far between.

He didn't love me.

A heavily pregnant young woman walked by with her lawyer and I felt sick.
Behind her were my in-laws. My brother in law I was prepared for. We had gotten along well but he had an obnoxious streak and I could bring myself to harden myself against him, to hate him even.  He saw us and came over to shake hands, as if we were about to buy a car from him. I reminded myself that this was hard for him too, that he was doing the best he could. His wife came too, which I wasn't prepared for. One of the sweetest people I knew, she and I had developed a friendship and I knew she genuinely liked me.  We chatted briefly and I held it together somehow.  Our eyes expressed the sadness that couldn't be spoken.

When my turn came, I moved as if in a fog.  I signed in every spot that the clerk jabbed at with his finger, my brain sending synapses to my hand that seemed to have nothing to do with me.

Afterwards, I lay alone on the bed, reading, filling my bewildered mind with new ideas.  Leaving no room for sorrow.  

A numbness took over.  Surprisingly, there were no tears, just the overwhelming desire to be alone.  

I have mourned this already, over and over again.

And so it happened

They started while I was driving home from work.  Triggered by nothing more than a pleasant memory, a sweet gesture that was well in the past.  The first few tears were slow, fat drops making rivulets down my cheeks.  Soon there were more memories, and with them came more tears. 

The time when I had the flu and he got up extra early on a Saturday morning to go to the shops.  He came back with brioche, something he had to visit several different shops to find.  While I continued to sleep, he put together a breakfast that he knew I would love.  I awoke to him leaning over me, asking how I felt and offering me French toast and coffee.

The solitary tears came faster as I reminded myself not to speed past the speed camera on the way home.  More thoughts came, unbidden.  The first time we kissed, sitting by that tiny waterfall after our picnic.  There were sobs now, and my shoulders shook with them as I pulled into the driveway.

I cried for an hour that night, and even my usual tactic of counteracting each pleasant memory with a painful one didn't help.  This was the breakdown I had been expecting since we made the decision to separate more than three weeks ago.  Despite how composed and functional I had been since then....despite the relief I felt, I know I was not exempt from this.

Unlike my tears over the past three years, these were not of desperation or of frustration at not being able to save something that was slipping from my grasp.  No, these tears were merely a release.  A mourning of what was and what should have been.  Of what we had, even though it was never quite what either of us wanted.  These were tears that tried to make sense of how he could be so wonderful to me at times, but still steadfastly not be in love with me.  They were of sadness, of an acknowledgment of loss.

So I cried as much as I needed to.  And I knew that this would not be the last time, that I would need to do this over and over until the pain had subsided, the loss had been mourned and the wounds had healed.

I cried, I missed him, and I cried some more.

Loop

Source

There are days when I am a cassette player.  When I was a kid we had a really old one, a bit of a fossil really.  It would get stuck and the tape would skip back and forth.  The same line would be sung again and again, like an obsession.

It often starts with a memory.  Me, picking a fight over something silly or asking him not to do something that he wanted to do.  At times he would be so stoic that his lack of reaction would cause me to continue to argue my case, well beyond what was necessary.  And he would continue to withdraw, fuelling my irritation further.

Other times it would be a revision of what happened in that first eighteen months.  The vaginismus that I started self-treating eight months into our marriage (but what if I had started earlier?).  The six to eight months of treatment that saw me cured (but why didn't I do it faster?).  The multitude of other excuses he produced for why he couldn't love me (my annoying mannerisms, my lack of 'self-awareness', my failure to clean the kitchen adequately for godssakes).

On the good days, the rational part of my brain wins.  The one that knows that the fights I picked were minor, usually justified and fairly on par with those in other people's marriages.  That I (mostly) reacted in a healthy way to the situation at hand. 

Miss Rational knows that dealing with a sexual dysfunction is easier imagined in hindsight than done.  There is the shame, the crippling feeling of inadequacy, the hope that one day it will all just work, somehow.  And all of that comes after the realisation that something is actually, seriously wrong. That this is not normal.  If a woman gets past all that and draws together the courage to seek treatment, there are the medical professionals, many of them who know very little about the condition much less how to diagnose it.

But there are also bad days.  The times when my mind is sucked into the vortex of regret, self-doubt and endless questioning.

 Those bad days, when rationality takes a back seat,  are the ones where for the entire day, one or two thoughts run in a loop in the cassette player of my mind.

If I had fixed this earlier....if I was what he wanted in every other way, he would have loved me.