Backing Up

I know I am skipping around but that's just how my mind works. Back in January I tried to start keeping a journal. Here for your reading pleasure is the first and only entry I ever made.

January 24, 2009
It’s Saturday night and I’m sitting here alone, again. It’s not so bad, to be alone. I enjoy the quiet, most of the time. Either that or I’m just getting used to it. I feel like I‘ve been on auto pilot, just going through the motions of life day after day. I got up this morning and made coffee for the two of us like I do every morning, 2 sugars and a bit of half & half for him, hazelnut coffee mate for me. I’ve been doing this most every morning for the past 24 plus years. That’s how long we’ve been married as of today. This morning was different. As I turned to hand him his mug I had this vivid fantasy of throwing it in his face and yelling “Here’s your coffee asshole!!! How does it feel to get burned?” I so wanted to do it. The thought of it made me smile. Oh how I wished I had the guts, but, I just sort of smirked at him instead as I put the coffee on the counter.
I can’t say how much longer we will be married, but I’m pretty sure we won’t see our 25th anniversary. We may still be legally married, but our marriage ended, for me anyway, this past July. The day I came home from the hospital after having a hysterectomy and found the receipt for the hotel he took another woman to. Yes, what a wonderful homecoming it was. Nothing says “I love you” like finding out your husband’s a cheating son-of-a-bitch! Yet, when I found it, instead of freaking out, I just made a copy of it. I scanned it, then put it back where I found it, and thus began a whole new phase of my life. In that instant everything changed. It was like being dropped in a foreign land where I knew none of the customs or the language. I could no longer go through my days pretending that my marriage was good, okay or even just normal. I was suddenly not really a wife anymore. I was...a woman scorned! You know they say, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”, I know it's true, I've seen it. But, I had no fury. I did feel something for a split second when I found that hotel receipt. It was quick and quite intense, but it wasn’t what one would expect for a reaction to finding out your husband is screwing around. Crying, screaming, yelling and making accusations would have been more common. But, for me, with what I felt in that instant, I just couldn’t do those things. Was I paralyzed by disbelief? I would have to say that was not the case, because what I felt, for that split second was…freedom. I actually heard the words, clear as day, “Now I can get out”, rolling around in my head. I was a little shocked, but apparently some part of me knew that this thing I called a marriage was not what a marriage was supposed to be like. The truth is I had suspected something was going on for awhile. I just didn’t want to believe it because I felt that believing it would be a reflection on me. It would only go to prove that I was, as I had suspected for a long time, unattractive. I would have to accept the fact that I was lazy, moody, no fun to be with and just a plain old bitch. But, then I realized that it had nothing to do with me. Sure I was all those things, but only with him. But that wasn’t the real me. It was who I had become with him. I was miserable. I had lost my passion. He had sucked the joy out of my life. Well, no more I said to myself, and that hotel receipt was my ticket out.