Drawing Dead

It is not the lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

I guess I don't need to be embarrassed by the fact I've been a quivering blob of despair the last 12 hours or so. Hell, why hold back now? Whatever triggered this change of mood (my money's on the anniversary), the end result is that having to look into X's dead eyes the last few days has been pure torture. So, in the interest of my own goddamn sanity, I convinced her to leave.

It's gonna cost me a bit of money in the long run, but I just can't see her. When she's not treating me with utter disdain, she's falsely cheerful. I don't know which I hate more. And that attitude, her very presence, is pushing me past my limit of anger management. Which is bad for everyone, especially AJ.

So, she'll be out within two weeks and I'll be stuck paying the mortgage by myself, spending four lonesome days a week in a 3000-square foot house with diminishing furnishings. I guess I could host Murderer's Row four nights a week. Just have Full Tilt charter a bus for everyone to make it out to my neck of the woods.

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I can accept that X lost her love for me. Nothing is guaranteed in marriage and I am hardly blameless in allowing conditions to deteriorate to the point they did. What hurts so deeply--and I've felt it more keenly the past couple days than previously--is the manner in which she went about this. After first unilaterally deciding our marriage was over, she set out to prove it to me--secretly--in the most destructive manner possible: by having an affair. My mind can not process how a person can do that to someone close. She must have no feelings for me at all. Not as a friend, not as a father, not as a human being. I may have failed to keep her insides burning for me, but I was never unavailable to her. I was always there for support, camaraderie and assurance. I was her equal partner in parenting, housework and finances. I never once gave her reason to doubt my commitment. Yet, in spite of all that, she callously undertook this path, thereby maximizing my misery. All without the slightest hint of guilt on her part. And I'm left to wonder how I could have so completely relied on, given my heart over to, a person who could do such a thing? How my every belief, trust and dream has been shattered.

I know I did nothing to deserve this. I know it's not my fault. Of all the events that could befall a person, this one is, relatively-speaking, pretty low on the list, falling well short of actual tragedy. There are plenty of people in this world who DO value my friendship and care and respect me enough to help me, or ask for help, when things are down. One person, even one I adored and admired for so long, can not change me, will not harden my heart with her profligacy, cynicism and indifference.

Quick aside: It's difficult to truly convey one's feelings when a tour group comes through the office and is populated by apparent apprentice models from the Victoria's Secret Trade School. Jebus. Cold shower, party of one?

Ahem. Where was I? Oh yeah, I'll be fine. My penis apparently still works, based on thirty seconds ago. I really do need to work on my reads, though. I've been drawing dead for seven years and only just realized it.