“I know,” he said.  “I did it so I wouldn’t have to hear your bitching,” he said.  “I’ve gotten better about driving the boat over the water like that, the fiberglass can’t handle it,” he said.  “Maybe I do better around people at keeping the mask on, pretending that everything is ok.  I’m still miserable,” he said.  “I’m done.  With all of it.  With this house.  With you. With [our son],” he said.  “I can’t be the partner you need me to be,” he said.  “I’m not sure I’m in love with you anymore,” he said.  The drinking every night.  The gaming all the time.  The lack of interest in anything we do as a family.  The anger at having to contribute financially.  The ignoring every milestone with our son.  The cheating.  The lying.  The inability to work with me.  The blowing up at our son for absolutely nothing and screaming at him for nothing.  The saying that he will help out when he can instead of prioritizing the family. The spending on himself no matter what situation we were in, us always coming last. Always wanting to be alone, always finding a way to be without us whether it was smoking a cigarette, leaving our son in the house alone, walking past us.  Then no longer kissing me good bye in the morning or answering a simple question.  And when I tell him I love him, in spite of all of that shit, “I know,” he says. 

I can admit that I made a lot of mistakes.  There were things I gave up because I thought I had to live my life a certain way.  I thought I wanted certain things.  I wanted to make people proud and feel certain ways about me.  I wanted to prove myself.  I probably forced more than I should have.  I had expectations.  But in all of that, I loved.  I always asked for input and feedback and perspective and feeling and opinion and I got nothing.  He didn’t even know himself and I forced my ideas and because he went with it, I believed that he wanted the same things as well.  Until the anger started coming.  He would tell me he wanted something and would agree to it and then do the total opposite.  People will always show you who they are and what they really believe.  When they show you, believe them. 

I didn’t believe him, I had hope.  I misread all the signs.  I took too much too personally thinking it was about my ego and I bitched incessantly when things weren’t going my way—mainly because I was working from what I had known and practiced my whole life, partly because I didn’t have any other feedback to go on.  I also saw the potential of who he could be and I saw how good he was with every other person but me.  Always the first to help out.  I should have believed him when he cheated.  I should have believed him when he kept talking to all of his exes behind my back.  I should have believed him when he slept for the first abortion.  I should have believed him when he never picked up the extra slack.  I should have believed him when he didn’t give a shit about our son’s first steps.  I should have believed him when he threw a hissy fit in Hawaii because he couldn’t get weed.  I should have believed him when he spent 10k behind my back.  I should have believed him when he didn’t pay the association or the cable or the electric.  I can admit that because of all the shit he put me through, I acted like I was owed a lot—because I took him back after cheating, because I took him on huge vacations, because I paid for the majority of everything always, because I took care of him period, I felt like he should want to give and do these things to show gratitude and make me happy.  I was wrong for that. 

But there was always something else underlying that I couldn’t accept and didn’t want to believe and I should have understood when we repeated this pattern.  I never wanted to believe he simply didn’t LIKE me.  That he never cared about me.  I had the fear in the back of my mind that he stayed with me because he felt guilty.  It was guilt, never love, that kept him around. He felt he had to do what I said because of all that shit and is now suffering because he doesn’t know who he is.  And I don’t know who I am.  I fixated on controlling him, on shaping him into who he could be because I didn’t want to get hurt and I felt I knew better.  He feels completely out of control in his life.  He’s an addict—to spending, to drinking, to smoking, to gaming, to everything he starts, he latches on to it.  And he is constantly leaving me in the dust.  So I searched for him and I clung to him thinking I was keeping myself safe. Giving him lavish things so he would see I was worth it.  And he looked 100% miserable the entire fucking time, the evidence of it right in the pictures I took at the time. I never took the time to honor my own dreams because I was afraid of losing him, afraid that he would hurt me.  I just never anticipated the hurt would come from the admission that he doesn’t even love me.             

For the lack of sanity, support, and faith, I sacrificed the very things I wanted on an altar of fear and shame, begging for approval and permission.  I said the same things, repeated the same fear and insecurity from my mom.  The same self-righteous anger and pretention from my dad.  Showed my love through what I could buy and then got resentful for being used and controlling because I was furious about being left behind.  Always hurt, always angry.  It was a perfect storm.  A guy never loved a girl, the girl was entirely mad for the guy, he hurt her and felt bad, she demanded love in return, he put up with it as long as he could, he was cracked the entire time with little bits of the truth always showing, she was broken entirely, he agreed to bits and pieces along the way to try and make up for it.  Then he shattered what was left. 

At 40 years old, I feel like I’m waking up and realizing that all of this was a complete lie.  That the last 23 years were nothing but acting.  I’m waking up empty.  Scared. Cold. Alone.  I feel exactly the same as I did when I was 20.  I wish he had never told me he loved me.  I wish I didn’t love him.  I wish I didn’t love the idea of him.  I wish I didn’t still have some hope that he will change his mind and we can create a new foundation.  Because I have no idea what I’m going to do next.  To be fair I’ve been in this relationship feeling alone anyway.  But the reality of being alone is entirely different.  I’m confused and jilted because he didn’t even know what he wanted so I want to know if it was so bad the whole time why did he keep agreeing to it?  Was it all guilt?  I feel I’m being punished for filling in the blanks.  Again, I know I went too far with the controlling, but I didn’t know what else to do.

So 23 years after I declared 8 words to him, 16 years after we said 2 words to each other in front of family, I’m afraid this is all ending with two very different words, “I know.”  I am absolutely helpless at this stage to force anything.  I don’t think I can force anything ever again.  I certainly can’t make someone love me.  I can’t make him feel anything.  I can’t make him be what I see in him.  I can’t make him hope for what I thought he wanted.  I can’t give him the answers I’m sure he is genuinely looking for.  I can’t read his mind.  I can’t fix this.  I can’t fix what doesn’t want to be fixed.  Truly I feel guilt and shame in this moment because I can see the massive amount of ego I brought to this relationship and how that ruined this whole thing.  How it has quite possibly ruined many relationships.  I hated people for torturing me so much that I built up this fucked up wall of incredible bravado and worth but it was all built on sand.  He had to dance around my mood swings just as much as I felt them, and it was exhausting.  To be fair, that was exhausting for both of us.   It was a fucked up cycle of him trying to avoid upsetting me and me feeling like he lied or hurt me and then spiraling out.  We never communicated honestly.  Either that or he really didn’t want to.

It hurts because I know I am responsible for this too.  And he doesn’t want to hear any of that.  This is something that can be healed with genuine honesty and open communication.  And he isn’t capable of that.  He can’t even do that for himself.  He needs to know who he is and no one can tell him that.  I need to know who I am and no one can tell me that.  I don’t want to be this version of me.  I don’t want to be this version that gets so wrapped up and ego driven that she is owed everything and pushes people away, that she pushes people into this cycle of only being with her because they feel guilty, the person who buys people.  I don’t want people to have to sing my praises to be in my presence.  All I ever really wanted was respect and when I couldn’t get that I should have been better about boundaries.  I wanted acknowledgement of who I am, that I had significance, not worship.  I wanted to share who I was without being taken advantage of.  And I manipulated this entire thing into a disgusting, murky, mess.  Instead of trying to band-aid and patch this, I should have just stopped trying to be anything and figured out who I am.

So now I have no clue where I go from here.  Except to start over.  I can’t go back.  But I can start again.  Completely let the past lie where it is, let it all settle, let the muck slough off.  And maybe after all that things will be clear.  I’ve been like this longer than I realized—scared, alone, egotistical, closed off, controlling.  All if it was defense mechanisms and those shields have been up for ages.  But if I let my true heart come out again and practice a little more patience and caution, maybe there will be something else there.  Release the entitlement and the demanding and just cooperate, trusting that all is playing out how it should.  Heal the hurt from all those years ago and remember who I am, not based on any opinion, but on what I feel.  Right now I feel…so much.  I know I just want him to be happy.  And I want the same for myself and my son.  That means accepting whatever happens next, no matter what it is.  It means saying I love myself and being able to say, “I know” to that version of me.