So much time has passed and so much has happened.
April 16, 2019 was the beginning of the end of Chapter 44 in so many ways.
It was the first day after tax season ended. I left work at 5:00 and headed home excited about the new length in my nights now that I wasn't working late. Jose was asleep and I had a my therapy appointment. The night carried on pretty normal and then I went up to bed at around 9pm because although tax season was over, my body was still feeling the effects. A few minutes later I heard Jose's footsteps coming up the stairs. He sat down on the bed next to me and wanted to talk.
Let me preface this by saying that yes we had our issues as a married couple. We had not been spending much time together. When I was home I was exhausted. He had been trying to carry the load at home while I worked long hours. I am sure that I resented him for not being able to do what I do the same way and get things done. But none of these things were things that can't be worked on.
So the talk started with "I have been struggling with us lately" and ended with "I am done. I am tired of trying. We always end up back in the same place and I don't want to do it again." And there was nothing in between the beginning and the end.
After I sat myself up and processed through my head that my husband had just told me that he was done with our marriage, I wanted answers. To my surprise not many answers followed. A blank face seemed to be staring at me, not the husband I had known for 18 years. He was done. He was ready to go spend the night at his mom's. He was ready to tell CJ. He was ready to walk away from something that I didn't even know he was struggling with.
Fast forward a little and this is what I have found out:
He is unhappy and has been unhappy for quite some time. After more digging discovered it was somewhere around two years ago that he started feeling this way. But he never shared the feelings with me. So he kept his feelings to himself and tried to deal with it on his own. He hoped he get through his feelings and never have to tell me that he had been struggling with us. As far as I am concerned, he gave up on our marriage as soon as he decided to deal with it on his own. A person cannot fix a marriage alone...it takes two. So his decision to deal with everything on his own lead to him resenting me. The resentment got out of control and then he went numb. Being numb allowed him to carry on in every day life like nothing was wrong until...he couldn't anymore. Apparently tax season got the worst of him and he couldn't wait for me to come home the day after to let me know.
The rug was pulled out from under me. I have always been the first one to say that you had to have seen something, felt something or noticed something. I didn't. He hid it well. He pretended well. He made me believe that we would spend the rest of our lives together. We talked about the next step of buying a house, we talked about retirement and vacations all within tax season and it never occurred to him to stop me in my tracks and tell me that he was clearly not planning the same thing. So my life as I knew it came to an unexpected hault on April 16, 2019.
Since then we have had to tell everyone in our lives. I have found a new place. I get my keys today and move in tomorrow. We have been living under the same roof since April 16th and it has taken every ounce of energy left in me to keep going. I have had to pack up my life (or at least my half of it) and go through all of our stuff. The memories have taken over my mind and the mental exhaustion has just beat me down. I have endured pain that I didn't ever think I would have to endure and I don't know how I am still standing.
I have a village. My village has held me up and kept me going. Everyone has read the Footprints in the Sand poem...that is me. I know that God has been carrying me through this difficult time because there is no way in hell I am doing it. He has made sure that I have a village here to take care of me. He is the reason I am still standing.
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