Inevitable

This will not come as a shock.

Six weeks ago, someone asked me how my relationship with the man was going.

"We're doing well." I responded. "I think we are going to make it."

This last year has been the year that I have waited for. He and I finally lived together as a couple after a lengthy separation. We spent every night together. No deployments, no trainings, no obligations to the "other woman" (the USMC). Raising our kids together, going to school, working, supporting each other, living our American dream: the house, the kids, the dogs, the whole kit and caboodle.

Five weeks ago, I could tell something was bothering him.

Four weeks ago, he told me he wanted a divorce.

Three weeks ago he went to a lawyer and filed for one.

Last week he moved out.

By the end of September, the end of the mandatory ninety day waiting period, he and I will no longer be he and I.

My emotions have run the gauntlet this month from denial to anger to sadness and everything in between. Senseless. That's my word for all of this: Senseless. It makes no sense to me why this is happening. I simply don't understand.

I'm beginning to realize, after asking the same question for the millionth time ("why?"), that I don't have to understand. But I do have to accept.

There are so many things I want to say, eleven years worth of things. Those closest to me have already had to hear them. "Didn't I give, didn't I love, didn't I forgive, didn't I stay?" On and on and on. I can talk about all the things that I think contributed to the marriage but in the end, none of those things matter.

No, seriously. None of those things matter if he doesn't look at them and see love. That doesn't mean love isn't there, no. That means it's not being shown in a way that he can recognize. The fault for that lies with both of us: him for not being able to communicate to me what it was that he wanted, and me for assuming that what I had to give was what he wanted.

Last night it occurred to me that my biggest struggle in all this will be learning to be content with this aspect of my life. I can accept that this is happening, but am I happy about it? Absolutely not. No, not when I look at my children and wonder how this will affect them, or when I struggle with all the spiritual questions that arise from these situations, or when I see him and want to slap him because, damn it, I thought we were finally ok.

But there are things that I am truly joyful about, and that is that both he and I have people in our lives that truly care about us. I have family and friends who, instead of telling me what I ought to do, simply ask what it is that I need. We are surrounded by prayers, for us and for the children. And most important of all, no matter how thick the fog of this situation becomes, I can look through the haze and see the Light and believe that the Light is good.

Continual Blindside

I can't decide if this hopeless optimism I feel is a gift or a curse, or is it optimism at all? Perhaps it's only naivete. Or perhaps it's a mixture of both. 

Synonyms for the word "naivete" include: artlessness, unsophistication, trustfulness and innocence. For the word "optimism" we have: hope, confidence, buoyancy, cheerfulness. 

I am confident that I am completely unsophisticated. Artlessness is the boat set sail by my buoyancy. I am cheerfully innocent. I am hopefully trustful. 

Therefore I don't see the train wreck coming at me in my periphery. There's no warning whistle, no rumbling of the tracks, no red lights flashing and arms dropping to stop me from standing in it's path. No, I let it hit me with the full force of its uncommunicative fury. Then I lay there in a soul shredded heap as each coal car runs me over again, and again and again. And in the milliseconds between each jarring hit, I think, "This won't happen again. This is the last one. I can change this." 

One of my favorite songs of all time is called, "Waiting for the Train to Come In." It goes like this:

"Waiting for the train to come in. Waiting for my man to come home. 

I've counted every minute of each live long day. Been so melancholy since he went away.

I've shed a million tear drops or more, waiting on the one I adore.

I'm waiting in the depot by the railroad tracks, looking for the choo-choo train that brings him back.

Waiting for my life to begin, waiting for the train to come in."

It's a song I have sung to each one of my children as I rocked them to sleep as babies. 

Truth be told, I waited so long for the train that I gave no thought to how it would arrive or in what condition. I thought I would be so content with the presence of the train that I didn't think about the actual content of the train. Certainly I expected the train to be at the station for the long haul. Instead, the engine has hitched itself to another set of cars, and made sure I felt each one of them on its way out. 

I'm not angry with the train. After all, it's just a machine. I'm angry I wasted so much time waiting for it.