A New Outlook; a Journey of Strength and Hope.

It has now been 6 months since you left. I have picked up the pieces of the man I once was, but some were beyond repair. I had to make new pieces, in an attempt to be whole. The new pieces, as hard as I tried not to, have been forged from sorrow, anger and fear. This is not who I am, but I am stuck with these pieces as a part of my being. They serve as a symbol of resilience and hesitance; I barely survived this destruction of myself and I don’t think I would survive another. It is in that vein that I have accepted the hardened man I have become, I know that a love like I felt for you may never come my way again. Love maybe, but not the love I had for you, I don’t think I could let myself. I have come to terms with walking this life alone, it is an adventure of independence and personal strength. I am not saddened by this to the extreme that I once once, it comes as a relief to be able to see my future life without having to feel this pain again. I promised my heart to you, and it will stay with you. It is yours to keep, I can and will live without it, or at least try. My father, a man of few words, and even fewer tears came to tears the other day, and could not speak for a few hours. When he had the strength to speak again he told me “not to bury my heart too deep.” I told him “I will try”.

Ultimately the reason I write today is that I worry, I worry that it is entirely unhealthy to live in the manner I am living. Unfortunately I see no other way, I do not want to use the pain I have experienced as an excuse to be a cold and distant person, I want to be warm and friendly and helpful to all people, I just don’t want anyone to ever come as close to my heart as you once did. Not out of spite, out of fear and love. Fear of being crumbled once more and as much as I hate to admit it, love for you. I can’t shake it, I try not to miss you, but I can’t. I see you and I still get anxiety attacks, something I have never suffered before. I have been able to think of you less but to no avail because if I don’t think of you, I dream of you. I don’t usually dream or at least I don’t remember dreaming. When I successfully push you out of my mind, I wake up in the mornings having dreamed of us. But I am here today, happier then I have been in months, more sober, and more hopeful than ever, but it all comes with a shadow of worry. Worry that I won’t ever quite be as happy and as fulfilled as I once was. Here’s to more happy, more hope, and a future I can live with.

Cheers.

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus

Looking for an Answer; Hoping to Last Long Enough to do So.

I don’t want to lose her, but I think it may have already happened. She is so distant, cold, and almost callous at times. I think she had given up on us before she even brought it to my attention. I miss her, I miss her so much. I don’t want to sound like a little 15-year-old boy but my vocabulary is limited; I just love her so much and I don’t know what I’ll do without her. She is seemingly having no issues with the fact that we having been sleeping separately for a while now and on top of that is very fluent in the art of living like a roommate with me. I am unsure if she is just very good at concealing her emotion; which is something she can do, it has just never been from me, or if she is genuinely so disconnected already. I have never felt like she would cheat on me, ever, and she has said that she wouldn’t explicitly, but I feel like falling in love with someone else would be the only logical way to explain such a sudden disinterest. I have asked her to help me clean the house and to help me go to our storage unit so we can bring home the futon (as I have been sleeping on the floor) and she hasn’t been able to do so yet. She has been busy, but I feel this is due to a lack of caring, possibly because I am overly sensitive at the moment. The only fleeting moments of her love for me that are left are when she says I love you; but this is bitter-sweet, I worry that it is but a habit, and I KNOW that she loves me, but not intimately. She may as well be saying I love you to her father or brother.

I don’t know if I can take it. We have agreed that we should try living like roommates, but I hate it. Every second. I miss her, and I love her, and I want to be with her. Unfortunately, I don;t think she feels the same. I am so stuck and so lost because I cannot talk to anyone. We don’t want the world/our friends and family to know yet so that their influence doesn’t sway our decisions one way or another. This means anyone whose opinion I would want to have, I can’t. I am not close with my parents and haven’t seen eye to eye with them on a lot of things, but the last little while all I have wanted to do is talk to them about it, which is SO strange. I wake every morning, in the office, on the floor and I’m not even upset, I have the strongest desire to walk into our bedroom, crawl in bed on hold my wife, to kiss her soft skin again, smell her hair, look into her eyes. All of it. I don’t just feel this way because I am a “horny male”, I don’t even want to have sex, I juts want to feel that intimacy between us again. God I miss her. These feelings, this absolute desire to have her back, to bring things back to “normal” make me think I won’t be able to do this. Things will never be normal, because she has realized that she doesn’t love me intimately, she loves me dearly, but not intimately. She says during the sexual and intimate times her anxiety is almost tangible; she thought this was normal; until recently and when she realized this she told me that she has never felt true intimate love with me from the beginning…. tough. If it never HAS been, how will it EVER be? I don’t think I can live in a “sexless” relationship where my wife has chosen to stay with me simply because she doesn’t think she can find better. I don’t know what to do, I feel like if I love something as much as I love her I am supposed to fight for it; but if what I’m fighting for doesn’t want me what do I do then? Living in this state of limbo in which I have to feign that I don’t want to reach out and hold her hand, or kiss her goodnight is killing me and I don’t know if I’m supposed to wait for it to end, or just end it know for my own well being. Even if it does end, if she stays, which is what I “want” I don’t know if I can deal with it, knowing she doesn’t love me the way I love her. I’m so conflicted.

Looking for an answer,

hoping to last long enough to do so.

Resentment

Resentment.

I hear about it a lot in break-ups, it’s not like I was completely unaware, but I am already resentful and it has taken me by surprise. I didn’t think it would happen at all, and for sure didn’t think it would happen so quickly. But here I am. I’m not perpetually sad, walking around like Eeyore with a cloud over my head, like I was initially; I’m spiteful, bitter, angry, and determined. This is not in my nature, I’m not a guy that holds grudges, or even gets angry. I’ve never been in a physical fight in my life, and I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve yelled at someone in an angry fight. Even with my wife, we have never really fought, and never have we yelled at each other. I feel like I am a pretty chill fellow. Now all of the sudden, I don’t want to hold her, I don’t want to kiss her, I am upset. I’m upset that she mislead me for so long. Yes, she wasn’t aware of her feelings until recently, but what am I to do now? I don’t want to be the man she has “settled” for because she is worried she won’t find anything better, on top of that I want a relationship where sex and intimacy are involved.

This has led me to rethink how I feel; I was worried that the longer I wait for her to decide what she needs to do the more I would wither, ultimately leaving me as a husk of a man. Now I worry that by the time she decides I may not be able to love he anymore. I worry that I will be too resentful and never be able to love her wholeheartedly because I know she has stayed because she has chosen to settle. I don’t want to be the one to ultimately have to end things, but it won’t be fair to either of us if this is how I feel. This scares me. It adds another alternative that is also a “break-up”. Aside from the fear it has brought on, it has brought on a grim hope.

A new light. The ability to start fresh; from nothing, build my life, build myself, build new relationships, new friends and lovers. The grimness of the situation is that it will likely cost me extensively financially; I am a student and cannot afford much in the way of accommodation. My wife and I have two cats and a dog, and unless I take on the dog, who I love dearly, we will have to surrender her. I don’t want to do this, as she is such a sweet heart and we rescued her; promising her she was safe and ok now and forever… So if I am to find a living situation that will accommodate a dog, and ideally, be a “non-roommate” situation, so I can find myself I will need to pay much more then if I could simply rent a room. Not to mention in due time re-accumulating all of the physical belongings we will have to split. But the very prospect of a new adventure has excited me. I love the new and the different, exploring.

I still love her, I truly do think I always will. But right now, I love her from a distance, with resentment. These feelings are so foreign to me, and could very well change, as they have throughout the process thus far. In the here and now and for the last few days I am upset, angry, bitter and resentful. Hurt. The most enlightening part of this transformation of my feelings though is the increase in my hope and optimism. Things might not be as bad as I expected; hard, but good. Trying to experience this whole situation as it is without forcing things one way or another will be a true balancing act.

Balance on.

Sitting on the Fence

I am a problem solver. To the point where it can hinder me when I’m supposed to just experience things. This is proving to create drastic swings in how I feel about my potential separation from my wife.

I am distraught, plain and simple. I can feign happiness for periods of time, but at a great cost in regards to my energy levels. When I am distraught and with anything in life, I try not to complain about it unless I am trying to fix it. Well, I have been trying, I haven’t stopped thinking about ways that I can still have a happy relationship with my wife but prospects have become grim. In their simplest form here are the prospects:

A) We stay together because she has an epiphany/change of heart and realizes she does in fact love me the way she wants to and is sexually attracted to me. (Hopeful, but unlikely)
B) We stay together because she has settled for this. Essentially best friends with the possibility of little to no intimacy.
C) We stay together, but as best friends/possibly Mother and Father, but have external romantic relationships. (Awkward, and unlikely, but I am trying to be open to anything)
D) We separate and eventually come back to each other. Would it be good? Could it be stronger?
E) Separation/divorce, the end.

So ultimately, there is really only one outcome (A) where things could be as I would like them to be and as I thought they were until recently (aside from infrequent intimacy). Now the likely hood of this happening is quite low and the amount of time it could potentially take to happen is exponential. This has lead me to become pessimistic in how I am viewing what is happening. I want to be hopeful, but I need to be realistic. So through my problem solving nature today has been a day where I felt strongly that the only way it will work is to separate. I am strong and so is she and we will have to live separate lives and move on from here. It was invigorating and scary at the same time, that I could so quickly have come to a decision after only a week.

Then I heard her voice and saw her face. My heart skipped a beat; I felt whole again. Logic and problem solving be damned. I am still in love with this woman, I don’t think I’ll ever not be. We talked, and laughed and at one point she held my hand. It took everything I had in me not to pull her into me and hold her and kiss her. I resisted saying I love you. I was able to wink and let go of her hand. That’s what roommates would do. I feel that these bouts of decisiveness will plague me until she reaches a decision. Excuse the terrible cliche, but let the roller coaster rides begin.

Letting Go: Long Day, Longer Night.

Letting go. Letting go of this is going to be the hardest thing I will ever do. Yesterday my wife and I decided that we should try to live like roommates for now. The logic is we would rather “try” to be separated now than do it “for real” and realize we made a mistake.

I gave her the last hug and kiss I may ever give her.

I am a strong person. More physically than emotionally, but strong and it took every ounce my being to let go of her. We hugged for almost thirty minutes before I had the courage to let her go.

It’s been hard. I promised her I wouldn’t reach for her by accident and then be incredibly sorry/ashamed that I did. I told her it will happen, but I will try hard not to.

Last night we didn’t sleep together. I slept on the floor in the living room (until we can arrange something better). This was hard, both the floor and the emotion of it. I woke repeatedly through the night, every time the reality of the situation hitting me even harder, a great swift punch in the face. She was in the room beside me but we were not together, because WE are not together. Thump.

This morning I am sore. Very sore. I cannot tell if it is from sleeping on the floor or if my body is just beating itself up. Logically it would be the floor, but I feel like I’ve been in a fight; everything hurts, everything is tender.

I’m trying so hard to be “normal”; to be happy and think of this as an opportunity to follow my dreams. Unfortunately all of my dreams involve her. The ones that don’t I still want her to be a part of. She can tell, I’m trying hard not to let it show. I just don’t have a lot of strength left… and it’s only day one.

I am not a religious man, not formally, I believe in the power of the self, and a certain amount of divine “intervention” that exists in our world. I believe what goes around comes around; so one should treat others the way he/she wants to be treated. You could call me agnostic I suppose. But at this point, I can’t tell if I’m past believing in anything , or so desperate to believe in something that I am blind. I’m looking for answer but at the same time trying not to just give up. On this, on everything.

I love her, I always will, but the very thing that brings me so much life and joy is killing me slowly. What is this supposed to mean?

Hope is waning.

Waiting & Breaking

Limbo continues. I don’t know if I will survive this. Every day that she takes to decide I lose more and more strength, along with that, hope.

I am so hopeful that she has a change of heart and a great reigniting of her love for me, but in the same instant I am incredibly scared. Scared that she will stay for the wrong reasons. Scared she will settle for me; for what we have, for the comfort of it. Scared that if she stays she’ll forever regret it and leave me later on. I’m so lost.

I don’t want to pressure her into staying. I don’t want to guilt her into thinking one way or another. I want her to make the decision as it is hers to make. At the same time, she is what I am most proud of in my life, the best part of my life. My best friend, and my soulmate; is this not worthy of fighting for? I feel that if I just lay back and let her decide I will forever regret it. I’ve been told and I believe in fighting for what you believe in. I believe in us. Have since I met her, did when I asked her to marry me, still do.

I worry that the longer it takes for her to decide the less of me that will be left to love if she decides to stay. I’m breaking, and I need to be solid. Why stay for a broken man?

Wishing I knew the answer. Dying more every day I don’t.