I was in my bathroom this morning getting ready to do my hair. I wasn't even really thinking about it, just unconsciously putting it up into sections so I could flatiron the wild & crazy waves out of it. As I was clipping up a large section, I heard footsteps in the entryway of my apartment and my heart instantly skipped a beat. "Could it be him?" I thought to myself, knowing full well that it wasn't. As I heard my neighbor's door open then close I could feel the strange yet oh-so-familiar combination of disappointment and full-knowing settle into me. Thoughts started running through my head, thoughts of times that he HAD come to visit me in the morning as I was getting ready for work, thoughts of the times that I foolishly allowed myself to hope that he would show up, thoughts of "Why do you do this to yourself?"...so many thoughts, all in the matter of a few seconds (thoughts are amazing that way, aren't they?) In the meantime I was still unconsciously separating my hair so I could flatiron the wild & crazy waves out of it. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, actually made eye-contact with the reflection of the stranger staring back at me.
"You've given up" is what the eyes of this stranger were saying to me. "You've settled."
I didn't even try to put up an argument of denial. I put my hands down and the tears started to fall as the realization that this stranger that was staring at me through my mirror was right. I have given up, I have settled.
My mom was first diagnosed with cancer in 1988. I was there from the moment she first heard the news until the day she died, and for many years after that. I watched her fight, I saw her beat it, twice, then I saw her give up as it came back for the third and final time. My brothers would argue with me, saying "You weren't in her head, you don't KNOW that she gave up." I love my brothers so much, but I was there and I know that my mom gave up. Here is the but: I don't think she knew that she was giving up. It was an unconscious thing. She didn't literally pick up a white flag and wave it over her head and say "Cancer, you win, I surrender." It was an unconscious act, probably caused from exhaustion and pain. That part I don't know, I will never know. I only know what I saw, and I saw my mom give up. She passed away shortly there after, no longer suffering, peacefully resting.
In November I gave up. By then I had been fighting the fight for 7 plus years. I was determined to win, I had sacrificed so much already that there was no way I was just going to walk away! I had become a bit desperate and did something I said I would never do, I set out to intentionally hurt the man that I loved. It was a choice that I made hoping that 1 of 2 things would happen: either his marriage would be over and we would be together or OUR relationship would be over and I could move on (I tried not to think about the 3rd thing that could happen, his marriage ending and OUR relationship ending). At first the contacts from me to her friends and family were anonymous. There was the messages to her friend, those didn't work. Then I called her mom, she wouldn't hear of it. Then I tried to strike at the heart of her, I messaged her church. Nothing! Don't these people care about her AT ALL? is what I was thinking as my plans to make her fully aware of her husband's affair failed over and over. Then, out of pure desperateness, I wrote her a letter, an anonymous letter (I was still trying to protect myself from the fallout). The letter told her everything, most of which she already knew. When he called me to tell me she had received a letter and read it while sitting on the couch next to him as they sorted through their mail together, my pulse began to race. I tried to lie to him, to pretend it wasn't me, but let me tell you, I can't lie to save my life! He could tell it was me, though I didn't come right out & say it yet. What I did do was wonder why the hell she hadn't packed her bags & told him to fuck off. Isn't that what most women would do? Why was she still there? Why wasn't he on his way to me to tell me she had filed for divorce, kicked his ass out of the house or at the very least, left to go to her mothers??? What the hell? The bomb had gone off, why wasn't their marriage tumbling from the explosion? Feeling as if I had failed again, I had one last bomb left, so I set the timer and waited. I emailed her church, again, this time I signed my name. This would surely do it, I thought. How could she stay married to a man when everyone in her holier-than-thou place of worship KNEW her husband was an evil adulterer?
My plans worked and WE broke up. She was talking to a lawyer which forced him to do the same thing, and I told him I wasn't going to do it anymore: it was her or it was me. I was so strong! For about 30 seconds. Then MY world started to fall apart. I thought I was far enough away from the explosion to survive without damage, but I collapsed. I had never felt so much pain in my life, not even when my mom died. Every beat of my heart was complete torture. Every thought in my head was "When is he going to come to me and say, She's gone and we can be together?" I have never felt the kind of heartache I felt in those weeks, and I just wanted the pain to stop. The thought of a life without him was more then I could bare. When he showed up on my doorstep, wanting to talk, and he looked so sad and alone, and I felt his arms around me...no, he wasn't leaving her to be with me, but there he was, he was there WITH me! He loved me, he missed me, he was aching and hurting and he was sorry...I didn't want to hurt anymore...
I gave up.
It was an semi-conscious thing. I didn't pick up a white flag and say YOU WIN! I GIVE UP! No, it was more of a, well, I'm not really sure what it was. I guess I saw two paths ahead of me. One path was dark and lonely, rocky and twisty and turny and completely frightening, I saw no signs of light whatsoever. All I saw was pain and tears and questions and more & more & more pain. Sounds fun, huh? On the 2nd path I saw more familiar sites. I saw love and warmth and yes, loneliness but the kind of loneliness I knew I could bare because I had been dealing with it for years. I saw great sex and laughter and exciting moments of stolen affection. I saw light at the end of the tunnel, granted yes, that light was very faint and very far away, but I could see it...or maybe it was a sunspot in my eye, I'm not too sure. But I convinced myself that it was the light I was looking for and it was worth waiting for. I took the nicer, easier, smoother path and left (or so I thought) that scary, horrible, lonely dark path behind me.
Have you ever gone on a long road trip? There are moments when you'll be driving along, maybe singing to the radio or having a deep conversation with your travel companion when all of a sudden you realize the road sucks. When the heck did it get bad? Was it at the last town, the last county, maybe it was at the state line? How could I not have noticed how crappy it had gotten? That's where I am right now. Doing my hair this morning and hearing those footsteps echoing through the stairwell leading to my apartment door, feeling the anticipation of seeing him, then feeling the instant disappointment when it was the neighbor making those footsteps that I so badly wanted to be his...that stranger in the mirror was me. It was the me who gave up. She had taken the easier path but hadn't realized that the path was changing, it had gone from smooth to rocky without her even noticing. The path was getting lonelier and lonelier the longer it got, and the light at the end wasn't so easy to see anymore. It had grown quite dim. That sad, lonely lady in the mirror was me.
Here's the thing about realization. It can be liberating, or it can be devastating. I am feeling a bit of both. Part of me wants to call him right now and tell him one last time, it's me or it's her. The other part of me knows how he will answer that and knows how much pain it will cause, and knows that I almost didn't survive and doesn't want to do it again. I know what I deserve. I know that most people see him as the devil, as the root of all my pain. I know most people can't stand him because they blame him for hurting me. I don't. I am responsible for my choices. I have chosen to stay with a man who has loved me more then any other man has ever loved me. I have made the choice to stay with a man who has never tried to change me, who has never told me I was too fat or too stupid or incapable of doing something. I have stayed with a man who has shown me the kind of love that most people only dream of...yes, he's married. That's the big bummer of it all. Other then that little bitty detail he is the complete and utter man of my dreams. He is my best friend. When I separate myself from him I feel incomplete (I know the new-age crap that no other person will ever complete us, only WE can complete ourselves (i've said it to friends)...not so true folks, not so true). When I am without him, I am hollow. So, having this grand realization this morning has really done nothing for me other then make me hurt. So fuck you Realization! I would rather be the ostrich with my head in the sand! I don't want to go back to that dark path, the path full of pain and loneliness and heartache and tears! I want it to go back to the way it was! Sure, yes, it fucking sucks feeling like 2nd place and only getting to spend an hour or so at a time once in while with the man I love, the man I want to spend the rest of my life with, the man I see when I look at wedding dresses and the man I think about 24/7! Yes, it bites ass that he feels like he's in prison, that he wants to be with me but feels like he has to stay married to her because he doesn't want to put his two youngest children through a divorce like his older children have all been through and that he thinks about me 24/7 and wants to be with me and can't wait until we can start our lives together (yes, I do believe him! I believe him because I want to believe him!). Hating her because she has everything I want and feeling like she doesn't deserve to have it, that is an awful feeling but if I have to put up with feeling like that to have him in my life, then that's what I want to do! But noooo, goddamn Realization has to springs if friggin head and make me look at things, make me see things differently...I don't want to! I can't go back to that pain...I won't survive....
So here I sit, on a Monday morning no less...at work, having to run a conference call and try to sound professional and confident when all I want to do is run away, somewhere so far away that no one would ever find me, including him. But alas I cannot. Life has a way of keeping us from running away, and it has a way of not allowing us to ignore the obvious. We can't bury our heads in the sand because we'll suffocate. We can't give up...if we give up we die.
