I feel like a robot, just going through the motions with absolutely zero emotion going on behind the exterior. I’m not sure I’ve processed what I witnessed last night. The scene keeps playing on repeat in my head, and I can’t even find it in myself to feel sad about it anymore. I think I ran out of tears around three AM.
Instead, a slow, familiar blaze is starting deep within my gut, and I know it’ll burn me from the inside out if it continues. Honestly? I might just let it, in the hopes that it scorches Chance on the way out, burning him as badly as he’s hurt me.
At least now I know why we haven’t been having sex lately.The voice in my head finds a silver lining, somehow. One mystery solved. A sarcastic mental high-five claps in my head.
It’s quickly overshadowed by the hurt, the confusion that’s followed my every thought since last night. If he didn’t want me, why would he have offered yesterday? How long has he been picturing someone else instead of me?
Ugh! This will drive me crazy if I let it, and I need tonotlet it.
Growling out loud, I try to push the warring thoughts aside and continue my morning routine. I don’t want to feel confused about my own life partner. I thought we were in this together, no matter what shit was thrown at the giant, constantly spinning fan that is our life.
I never considered a world where we weren’t still in love with one another. Where we were just two adults who shared a roof over our heads and four miniature versions of themselves, with no other emotional attachments. But it’s rapidly setting in that that’s what we’ve become.
If I’m honest with myself, it’s felt that way for a while now. Last night was just the final nail in the coffin for our love story.
I guess it’s inevitable. Being with the same person for years and years. Marriage. Kids. Your life changes in so many ways (not to mention your body does, too), and it’s probably wishful thinking to imagine we’d be the same, crazy-in-love, horny little shits forever that we were at the start of our relationship.
But that still didn’t prepare me for visual proof that I was no longer what my husband wanted. That left a mark.
Chance hasn’t woken up while I have been getting ready, and while I normally take it upon myself to stir him with a soft kiss on the cheek and something murmured into his ear that’ll get him up one way or another, today, I decide he can handle it himself.
That’s what he’s doing now, anyway, right? Handling his own needs? Getting up to the thought of someone else, not me?
Mental applause rains at my double entendre, and a bolt of pride lights up within me at the dig.
Listen. Let me tell youright now, I can hold a grudge like NOBODY’S business. I never claimed not to be petty, okay? But the level of rejection I’m feeling right now from the one person I was supposed to be able to count on until our very last breaths… it’s struck something deep within me.
Something nasty is coming to the surface, woken after years of slumber, rising to defend me, protect me from further hurt. And the sour thoughts continue, this thing at the helm.
If he doesn’t want me, don’t worry, he won’t fucking have me.
My armor clinks into place, and I feel the determination settle into my bones, what lies beneath.
He willnotwin this one. He’llwishhe only rued the day he gave up on us.
I leave the room silently, greeting our goldendoodle, Sir Wags, who spent the night in Bradshaw and Ford’s room, and letting him out in our postage-stamp backyard to do his business before giving him breakfast since Chance is still sleeping, and then I head into our small kitchen where I prep all four lunchboxes mechanically.
As I do, I can’t help but think of the memories we’ve shared in this kitchen.
Christening it the day we got the keys to our very first home, lovingly dubbed Casa Anderson, with him taking me roughly against the counter. I feel myself clench around nothing, even against my own will, at the memory of how he pounded into me from behind, then peppered me with sweet kisses as he made love to me on the floor, much more sweetly than the first round, not ten minutes later. One fist comes up to angrily swipe away what has to be the last remaining tear inside my hollow ducts that spilled at the sight of that floor.
I remember him busting his ass nights and weekends for those first three months to renovate the kitchen from that ugly fucking linoleum and Formica shitshow into something I hope Joanna Gaines would be proud of. Or maybe Jojo would’ve been proud of it ten years ago. It’s a little dated now, with the butcher block countertops and the subway tile backsplash, but I still love it.
Well, I did.
This whole kitchen used to make me smile.
Now every single thing my eyes settle on makes me bitter. Makes me wonder what changed. Makes me wonder why he no longer wants me as hiswife, just the mother of his children, and that woman he shares a house and a bank account with.
I can’t even pinpoint when things started to go south. I just know that we arenotwho we were when we fell in love, or even five years ago. Somewhere along the way, the romance has seeped out of our marriage, and we were left feeling more like convenient partners in the business of life than the person you can’t breathe without.
We’ve become the person who, if our schedules line up, can pitch in and get the other one off, but more often than not, we’re left to our own devices, juggling work, the kids, and whatever other shit takes priority over our marriage.
I feel like I’ve been fuckingtryingto keep alive what we once had, but now I’m wondering if I’ve been an idiot to hold out hope through these past months where we’ve grown more and more distant as a couple. My thoughts spiral out of control as I steam on the subject.
Fine. If he wants to share a house with me, raise our kids together, and have the relationship end there, that isfine by me. (If I sound a little like Ross Geller there, let’s pretend like I don’t, thanks.)
If he wants to treat me like a fucking roommate, I’ll be his god damn roommate.
