Day Twenty-Two: Remember (September 3rd)

After he left for work early in the morning and my bed was finally mine again, I experienced a strange feeling of relief. I was relieved that my personal elephant in the room was gone: I knew I could never share a bed with this man ever again. I could not lay there, pretending to think that it could ever be healthy or normal. Forget what he has done: I never wanted to spend another night with these emotions, next to the man who had caused them.

I was never one to keep my feelings to myself. But at night, when they can sleep as if nothing is wrong, the woman is awake, analyzing, preparing, planning and anguishing over the details. The kicker is this is when I CAN'T express my feelings to the culprit! They are resting like a baby! This is what I did every night during the last 5 months of our relationship. Every night, I would lie awake, pondering every nook and cranny of our relationship and I was still doing it. Well, fuck that. I don't even have a commitment anymore. This was not my job! And you know what? All that thinking, pondering and attempts to converse about our problems, didn't help one bit. You cannot fix a situation between two people when only one of them is doing the work. Instead of repairing our problems, he was adding to them, feeding my insecurities and carrying on like a single man. No amount of talking is going to fix that if the guy isn't dedicated and is, quite frankly, incapable of telling the truth.

This realization was meant that I could no longer deny it and I had to follow through. I stayed home and sat with these feelings. I even beat them with the conversational stick with the help of a girlfriend and a bottle of wine!

Talking through things like this is not a waste of time. Because now, unlike before, there is only one player needed to make this play successful. And that player is me. If I could dedicate myself to this relationship, even when it looked as if a loss was inevitable, why could I not secure a win for myself and walk away?

I stayed awake, analyzed the details, argued both sides of my mind and heart, finally laying my head to rest at 5 A.M. There really is no point in participating in any shape or form in a losing game. It was time I started rooting for myself. And that is a bet I think I can finally get behind. I need to stay strong.