I spent a third of my life believing I was in a relationship that was meant for eternity. I fell asleep one night truly knowing that we were going to make things work as we always had because of our love and the love we shared and experienced raising our kids. Life was never easy, and we didn’t “force a square peg” so to speak to make things work, but things always worked out eventually. It always seemed to work out in “God’s timing.” It was a phrase we used fairly often because things always seemed to work out when we least expected them to. We would get simultaneous events of deja vu, goosebumps prickled our skin and we’d look at each other asking one another if they felt that as well. We would marvel at our children and whisper that they felt as if they’d always been there somehow in the background of our lives and having them physically there in the flesh before us just felt natural and made our lives feel more concrete and “right.” I loved nothing more than my children and husband. I loved them more than anything, and I wanted to get past the speed bump of “funk” our marriage had entered into the fall before the ultimate betrayal. I spent ONE THIRD of my life fine tuning and learning the person who genuinely felt like a piece of the puzzle who completed who I was. Despite the impression most people saw when they looked at us, he knew ME. He knew what set me off, what knocked the wind out of me, what would break my heart... and inevitably used those against me. But the person I was in love with, who I felt completed me, the man who died and woke up a stranger... that man could complete my sentences. He could hold my heart and stroke the sorrow away. He hung the moon and I fought and defended him because I knew him better than I knew myself. My husband could say one word and it would throw me into a fit of giggles taking me back to a shared moment 20 full moons past. My husband would kiss me at red lights, saying “punch me” with his face turned towards mine as a dare to the cars behind us oblivious of any cares as to whether it turned green in 2 seconds or 20. My husband would make dinner before I got home from work knowing exactly when I’d had a rough day even if I hadn’t told him. He would come to me, my belly big and full of baby, and whisper to our child to go easy on me, joking that I was simply a carrier for his spawn and apologizing ahead of time.
I can pinpoint exactly when he died. I can give you the exact second he ceased to exist on mine and our kids plans of existence. The man we knew died and we were denied any opportunity to appropriately grieve him because we were immediately haunted by his corpse.
I am hesitant to want any sort of friendship or even association with the man who claims to be the father of my children as they are not one in the same. The man I believed in and cherished us would have never done us the way this stranger robbed us. I can’t parent WITH a stranger, who with slight of hand turns his words to venom alongside the sharp tongue of his wife. We would never even have been friends, barely acquaintances, with this couple who I share our children with.
Comparison is the thief of joy. I know this. The devil knows this. But when all you’ve known changes overnight, and you’re left screaming silently that you just weren’t ready... you take your time allowing others to see the you that exist full time. You get irritated and overwhelmed by differences and unfair expectations you have of the other person because you TRAINED to be the perfect wife, partner for someone else you hadn’t expected to lose. Someone you knew how they liked their coffee, knew what size/style they wore their underwear and would replace after the ass would wear out on them, someone who knew when it was safe to touch could read my body language as I could their own as if we were extensions of one another.
There’s no advantage on this side of the fence. Because I wake up every day to the voices of the children my husband and I made out of love. My husband. MY husband. And I look in their faces and see the curve of his lips on her, his ears on our oldest, the swirl of his hair in our youngest... I see the man I married. I see the loves of my life, and they know me as he did. And it hurts. And I grieve. In silent moments, I grieve. Because I’m not allowed to say it out loud, I grieve. Because it’s unfair to the others that I love, I grieve in stolen moments.
I don’t want the stranger in my dead husband’s corpse. I don’t want the stranger who left my children fatherless. I want the extension of my soul back. I want to feel complete again. I just want to feel like a whole human again and it feels entirely unfair to expect anyone else to fill that void or to learn me.
At this point I want to merely exist in my own happiness brought to me on my own terms and by my own means. I want to share that happiness with the people I love, and the little humans I grew and built inside my body. But I don’t know that I can ever fully share myself with another person knowing the grief that is possible when you fully immerse yourself into someone else.
