Unprotected

My wife, Lauren, left me.

While Lauren was falling in love with this other woman, she began violating more and more boundaries. I slowly became angrier and angrier as I tried to control their relationship, adjust and accomodate. I did and said terrible things. I got drunk, name called, hit, lied, fucked the other woman’s girlfriend and lied about it.

One day,  Lauren said she was going out for a few hours. She called that evening to say she was moving out. She left two days later for a four day vacation with the other woman and when she got back she said our marriage was over. She refused to talk to me about it. She refused counseling. She said she never would’ve forgiven herself is she had stayed with me. She said it was an act of self preservation. From beginning to end, it took 8 weeks for our marriage to unravel. Lauren lives with her new girlfriend now and they talk about getting married and having children.

Tonight was a hard night at work. A man overdosed on beer and asprin, then slashed himself 20 times with a scalpel. I think that’s why I’m finally writing now. I feel a little torn open by the experience. I also told another friend the story tonight for the first time. I feel a strange alienation from my friends and family when I talk about it. Like, why aren’t they crying? Why are they so calm? Am I the only one spending my nights sobbing and screaming into the mattress? The answer, of course, is yes. My friends get off the phone with me and kiss their fiances, snuggle their children, go make dinner. I am totally alone with this.

This blog is done. I dont have to hide from her family anymore, so I dont need to be anonymous, but Lauren reads it, so how could I possibly keep it? I picture her new girlfriend reading this entry over Lauren’s shoulder. I imagine she has already showed her family. Part of me wants to seal myself off from Lauren to punish her for throwing our marriage away like this, to protect myself from this pain, this panic. Part of me wants to write to her through this one way glass dilligently, I am so desperate to feel some connection to her, to imagine the wholeness I felt when she used to read these entries and come home and tell me how much she loved reading what I wrote, how it helped her understand me, how she thinks I am funny and smart. That part is most alive around 4AM. Its a sad and pathetic part.

As it is, I have been ripped into dozens of pieces. I lost my wife. I am not having a baby. I do not have my best friend, my children’s mother, my lover, are all gone. It’s like a plane went down and everyone I loved was on it. Including me. I am at the part of the accident where I am running on adrenaline, unaware of the extent of it all. Soon, though, I’ll be sitting at a table with all my pieces laid out bloody in front of me trying to figure out what can be sewed back on, what I can survive without, hoping I will recognize myself in the mirror when its all over. Then, every morning, I will have to wake up and remember it again for months? Or years?

By the way, my name is Desaray.