15
We would have been married 15 years this year.
I still have to stop myself from deleting your image from photo albums, erasing your existence from our records, because the husband and father we thought you were is not synonymous with who you are now.
The person smiling back at us beyond the pages of these albums was who we desperately wanted and needed you to be.
You made it so clear that you were never truly that person and it killed you to be him. You made us, the kids and I, attempted murderers. We were the ones who failed you. We were the ones who asked too much when to us it felt like the bare minimum.
The woman I always was had to be stitched tightly under my heart, closed her off beneath my breastbone. I tucked her away, dimmed her light always in hopes your light could shine… as an EMT, firefighter, veteran, artist, father, father, father, father, best friend, spouse… every time your mask fell away, the door would shut the outside world out and we would be trapped with the person you say you truly are now.
17 years ago, I sat behind the wheel of my car in the early morning summer hours as the sun shrugged the clouds and pines off her shoulders. I sat there crying and writing to myself how I deserved someone who appreciated the things I loved too. How inviting you to join me in fellowship at the monastery for morning meditation would mean the world to me and you rolled over when I tried to wake you… saying you weren’t in the mood. You didn’t care. You slept spread out in my bed, in my loft, with zero remorse towards my distress of leaving that person I was behind… for you. I recall cleaning out my car to find that notebook and reading those words, cheeks stinging with what I thought at the time was shame and now knowing 17 years later, wasn’t shame for my raw honesty with myself but shame for ignoring my own cries for help.
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