Alrighty so it's been forever. In fact, I was stuck on the idea that maybe I wouldn't write here anymore. Mostly because writer's block plagues the hell out of me. But, lucky for you guys, I have so many feelings and so few people who want to listen to me whine. I plan on using this little blog to vomit out all of the things in my head so that I can feel better.
I live 2,714 miles away from my home. I am 22 years old and I am standing in the ruins of what used to be a beautiful marriage. For the first time in a long time, I'm not really sure what the next step is.
When I was 16 years old, the boy I had been madly in love with for years finally called me up and asked me out. A year and a half later, he was on one knee asking to spend the rest of his life with me. In our typical whirlwind fashion, we wed 2 weeks later. Most people would say that we did everything wrong. Most people expected us to fail. Most people will not gasp or second guess us when we tell them that now all of that is over.
Despite the fact that my marriage barely lasted 4 years, I don't regret one single moment. I believe the love we cultivated together was perfect. I was loved in my brokenness, in my childishness, and in my own self-doubt. I was tugged along through Europe on the craziest adventure of my life. We climbed volcanoes, we sailed the seas, we mumbled our way through foreign languages, and I will be damned if anyone says we didn't do the best we could.
We laughed together until our sides hurt. We cried together when our hearts ached. We loved each other in a way that made everyone believe we were still dating. I've been thinking about the past a lot and I'm just not sure when these things stopped being true. I shift through moments in time when we weren't at our best, but I cannot find a rift big enough to put us where we are right now. I'm looking for changes in his voice, the look in his eye, the falter in his kiss, and I just can't find it.
I guess maybe falling out of love is a lot like falling in love. Little things start catching your attention; like the way I snore in the Winter or the fact that I washed all of the laundry and didn't put it away for two weeks...again. Your priorities start to change- time together takes a serious back seat to that new video game you just bought and absolutely nothing sounds worse than tagging along at the grocery store. I think maybe it's a gradual change, little by little, until you finally look at the person next to you and wonder how the hell you got here.
Maybe last year when he was going through all of those emotions, I should have let him go. I told him our love was worth fighting for. I told him he could spend more time by himself if it helped. I told him that I could get him into therapy and I could make his interests a priority. I told him it was temporary and I was wrong. I kept him locked in for another year and maybe he's been miserable the whole time. I've always been so selfish in love.
I don't think I would trade one of what we had. I don't regret an ounce of love that I gave to him or a single kiss we shared. I think we learned a lot together and I think our marriage helped us both grow. It's sort of funny though, because when I look at it, I think life tried to break us up a thousand times. When we were kids, he didn't want to do long distance so we broke up. When he came back, I was with a different guy, but he waited this time. When he got his orders to Germany and we didn't have plans to marry, he should have gone and I should have stayed. A few times we had tiffs where he would get in a really bad place and try to pull away. But I thought being there for him and loving him were the same thing.
The point is that we made our decisions and we had a beautiful marriage. It wasn't perfect and it wasn't forever, but it was full of love and discussions and problem solving and some really great sex. We worked so hard to make sure that we were doing it right. We were young and lost and we did the very best we could.
Things are getting really sloppy and scary and real right now. I think there's a lot of pain in our house. I think there's a lot to process and it's hard to keep our heads on straight. We're both sort of sitting in this limbo- avoiding each other for the next week. He's trying to kill time until he can move out and I'm just trying to stay out of the house. In 7 more days I will be packing boxes of my husband's clothing and dishes. When we go to drop them at his townhouse, I'm thinking it may be the last time I see him for a while. A few weeks ago, I was wishing I could just pause for a bit. I wanted a few more cuddles, to be called babe just a few more times, maybe a couple 'I love you's. Now I'd like to fast forward. There's been no love in our home for quite some time. We didn't get to wean off the affection, it just stopped dead in its tracks.
Alright I don't really have much steam left to think about this. Just had to get some of it out there. Feeling 100 times lighter.
