Giving Voice - Part 2

These are my favorite kinds of days, warm sun, and cold breeze. It is perfect hoodie weather. So, I took a walk. I listened to some classics on my headphones and did my best to ignore the vehicles flying by. It reminds me a lot of my life right now, just trying to keep my head down and ignoring the near misses flying by. I remember being actively engaged in life, much like one would remember a favorite childhood birthday, pleasant and warm but foggy and without detail.

I grew up as part of the “purity movement” of the early 90’s. I decided when I was thirteen years old that I would not date until I was ready for marriage and would save my first (kiss, sex, etc) for my wife. I kept these promises until I met my kid’s mother. To make things easy we’ll just call her “A”.

I was a non-traditional freshman in college, about twenty years old, when I met her. Our first real interaction she asked me, “How do you say your last name?” I grinned and replied slowly, “Y o u r l a s t…” I was interrupted by a half full water bottle hitting me in the head. I picked it up and handed it back and we talked. She was in a relationship at the time and we would hang out in a group of friends.

One night we were playing ping pong in the activity center and she fell. When I offered her a hand to pick her up our eyes locked, and I felt a shock run through my body. We both swallowed hard and excused ourselves and went to our dorm rooms. Over the next week I heard about how she had been trying to leave the previous relationship and guilt had manipulated her into staying. At the end of the week she broke up with the other guy.

I asked her the next day if she would like to go study for an upcoming test and paper at a local bookstore. When we left the bookstore, we decided to go get something to eat and after eating noticed the dollar theater had a movie, we were both wanting to watch. Halfway through the movie our phones began to light up and we realized our friends would call this a date and there would be drama.

On our way back to campus we discussed if we were serious enough about each other to make the coming drama worth it. We decided, yes, we were. Despite some rather significant drama, we were engaged on New Years Eve and married in May. I kept my word and on our wedding night A became the only woman I had ever slept with, though she had already had my first kiss.

We were crazy about each other and I promised on the night we got together I would spend my life trying to make up for her rather traumatic past and give her the love and security she needed to be truly happy. Like all married couples, we had our arguments, we were very different people learning to live together. Yet, we desperately loved each other, and being together, something that others would notice about us rather quickly.

This lasted through college, her master’s program, and the birth of our first son five years later. By this time my recently developed health problems had us in my parent’s house in Texas, and we were struggling to find a way back out. We eventually did just that, but the job that got us out began wearing very quickly at our relationship. Arguments went unsettled and less time was spent together, and the constant stress of our work made intimacy a rarity. It was at this point she first told me she was taking our son and leaving.

I begged and pleaded for her to stay, and despite her later apology for having made the threat, from that moment on something changed in my head. Every day became a pressure of things I had to do to make A want to stay with me. If I can give you one piece of advice it would be to say that no relationship can survive that mindset. As the years went by my existence became more about my performance to make her happy and she became less and less satisfied.

The specifics would change, but nothing was good enough, enough was never done, and when I spent enough time to get more done then I was ignoring her and the children. Even when she did or said something that hurt me and I would try and express this, it became another thing that was wrong with me that I would be hurt by it.

Eventually she got a teaching job, something I had been encouraging and supporting her pursuit of for years, even when she wanted to give up. It was not long after that A’s personality began to change. I was attending church again and felt that I was making leap in bounds in understanding her love language and loving her well. As I felt I was coming together, she began pulling further away. The laundry list of complaints about me grew and were rarely the same from complaint to complaint.

Meanwhile, A’s personality, her choice in music, appearance, behaviors, activities, and more began to look like a different person. She told me she felt distant and didn’t even know what was wrong with our relationship. She thought we should be best friends but that meant me supporting and showing interest in everything she liked, and I obviously didn’t. She put passwords on all her devices and would not let me see anything if I asked.

Finally, I found a letter saved on a tablet explaining that she did not love me anymore. Rather than confront her, I brought her into our room one night and asked her if she still loved me. She said no. To make a long story short, she said there was no one else, it was my fault, and she did not want to work on our relationship, she would be seeking a divorce.

My kiddos are sitting in the floor playing Among Us with their cousin. Even with a gray and overcast sky these are the most beautiful days I have. Any day where I wake up to my kid’s voices is a win. Though, they don’t make writing the easiest. I have a chaotic bonfire of emotion raging in me today as my daughter just told me that her mother introduced them to the, male, she left me for.

Which I suppose spoils the next part a tad. During the long and emotionally horrid process of divorce I found out A was cheating on me. Though she denied this fact vehemently the evidence just continued piling up. Eventually it was like a child refusing to look up and resolutely crying that the sky is neon pink. So, I stopped confronting her on it at all, I figured she knew that I knew and I knew she wouldn’t admit it, so why bother?

I spent the next year in a small house in the ghetto crying, contemplating suicide, and struggling to work enough to not lose they drafty hole I was able to afford. Eventually, I started to think about what I could possibly do with my life if I wasn’t going to kill myself. I went back to college seeking a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. Unfortunately, a year into the program my disability symptoms got so bad I couldn’t live alone or handle the workload of the program.

I was forced to move states to live with my mother. This meant that my access to my children went from full-time, to half-time, and now to weekends. I struggle with depression, bitterness, unforgiveness, lack of trust, and more. I don’t have the answers, and I often feel too exhausted to ask the questions. Most days I wish I weren’t alive as I see very little point or worth left in my life. Sometimes it feels like my life is a cosmic joke designed to set me up to take a fall over and over and over.

All except for these days with my kids. One and half days a week I want to wake up, to hold my little ones in my arms and love overpowers the darkness. I know that I cannot kill myself; my kids need me. I have expressed these feelings to others I know, only to be told “wow. That’s a lot” and never hear from them again. I know my life is a burden to all but my kiddos, who shower me with love and wishes to spend more time with me.

I decided to write these two articles because I have no one to share my story with; nowhere to be heard. I never speak the words that my inner voice mumbles day and night; your worthless, pointless, hopeless, and trapped. Nor do I allow the anger or bitterness that I can not seem to eradicate from my heart to ever express itself. Yet I feel myself slipping into cold, unloving, and angry outlooks on everything.

As I said, I don’t have the answers. What I do have is two little kids who need a Daddy to hug them and love them what time he can, so I think I will go do just that. If I can say one thing, one word of advice, find some way to tell your story, to let the voice inside of you be heard, it does help.