Life Is Pain…

Mary left me two nights ago.  It was a Thursday and I had to work late to perform some maintenance on one of our servers.  Our son Tom had a wrestling meet that they all went to.  Mary had told me via email & text a few times that afternoon and evening to call her before coming home.  I knew that something was up, but she seemed reluctant to discuss until then.

I let her know that I was on my way, it was perhaps 9:30 or 10.  She called and told me that she was leaving.  She had already moved out her clothing and some other items from our bedroom.  We have a second house, that is going to be foreclosed, but it’s currently empty so she took the day off of work and moved her stuff into it.  She was unwilling to see me.  I should have just driven home…but fear sometimes causes you to hesitate.  That’s my problem, well one of them.

I spend the next 36 hours in bed.  Not eating, not sleeping.  Crying.  I feel so lost.  I feel hurt.  I feel angry.  She left, without giving us a chance to work on things.  And she wouldn’t even do it to my face.

I’m not a bad man, as a matter of fact, she outright told me that I”m a “very good, kind man.”  But now, I’m a broken man.

I realize that constantly writing “my wife”, “her”, “our daughter/son” is tedious to read.  I will give them false names for anonymity sake.  From here on out:

Frank = me
Mary = my wife
Tom = our son
Suzy = our daughter

Hopefully this will make things a little easier to read, if you haven’t already left screaming.

We had a situation last night.  I had misunderstood something my wife had told our daughter and my mistake was to try to honor what I thought she wanted.  You should know that our daughter is really my step daughter; however, I’ve been in her life since before she turned 2.  She calls me daddy and I believe that she feels I am her dad.

Anyway, her biological father came back in the picture recently.  That’s something that at first my wife did not share with me, and it only came to light when she thought I may have caught a glimpse of an email between him and our daughter.  The truth is, it does not bother me.  We have talked about it before on several occasions.  She has a right to know who her father is and, if he’s willing, to get to know him.  I’m fine with that, always have been.  The only reason we haven’t pursued it in the past was my wife’s reluctance.

Anyway, now they’ve been communicating via telephone and he’s even scheduled a trip to the area for several reasons, one of which is to meet her.  My daughter has been very focused on this, she’s very excited!  This is a good thing for her, but at the same time she also has a condition that tends to make her get very agitated about things and to build up expectations to an irrational level.

I did hear my wife tell her the other night that she did not need to speak to him every day so when she asked tonight to give him a call, knowing that she’d called several times over the past few days, I decided that maybe she should wait.  My wife was out of the house and I was trying to err on the side of caution.  Well, that was a mistake, and it was stupid of me to think about it.  Rather than thinking of what my wife had said, I should have thought about what my daughter needed.

It was bad.  I know that I’m only human and I make mistakes, but this was one that resulted in a very serious episode.  I felt terrible about it of course, but could not change what I’d done, only apologize and try to learn from it.

After my wife got home and we got things straightened out,including letting our daughter call her father, the night went a bit better.  After our daughter went to bed, my wife simply went into the spare bedroom without so much as a word.  Going in and sitting down to talk to her was difficult.  As much as I poured out my heart and asked her to share hers (not in those words), I felt that she simply was holding back.  I suggested that we start seeing a counselor for us, someone that we could talk to both together and individually.  She seemed open to it so I was hopeful, even though my heart still hurt.

We have a counseling session with our daughter on Wednesday which I’m not going to be able to make this time, but my wife told me she would get some recommendations for someone for us from our daughters counselor.

December was a hard month.  My wife has barely spoken to me.  When I try to communicate with her, she shuts me down prefering instead to email her feelings to me.

Seriously…email…

She tells me that she is not happy with what her life has become and that she doesn’t feel our home is a happy one.  She’s right, it’s been a year filled with more stress than I’ve ever known, and we’ve both handled it badly.

But now it’s time to change that.  We need to work together, communicate, and take control of our lives again.

Last night was not good.  We “celebrated” New Years on East Coast time rather than our own, mainly so that we could get our daughter to bed.  For her, schedule is very important.  Staying up too late or not getting enough sleep causes her a lot of hardship.  Still, when the clock struck, it was obvious that my wife did not want to celebrate with the traditional NYE kiss.  I laid in bed last night with such a pain in my heart, it was almost too much.