Because of you …

I apologise now, this post is going to be a rambling one, and a difficult one for me to write. It may be all over the place.

This week is a very hard week for me. Every year it is equally as hard and I am hoping that eventually it will become easier. I used to look forward to this time with joy, but now it just brings a lot of memories – both bad and good, but the bad ones are the most prevalent at the moment. In December 1994, I met a woman who I liked straight away. I asked my friend if she was seeing anyone, and my friend say that the woman was off men. I used to walk her home after leaving my friend’s house. At the beginning of April 1995, my friend told me that this woman wanted to take me out to dinner. My first response was “why?” My friend said “because she really likes you”. Again, I said “why?” I had never had a girl ask me out before. In fact, the last time I had dated someone, it was four years earlier and she ran off with a friend of mine. (That was the closest I ever came to violence on anybody other than family – against him that is – I would never lift a hand to a woman)

After a short while, I fell for this woman in a serious “I can’t breathe without thinking about you” way. I proposed, she said yes, and we were married later that same year. August 18^th in fact. I even went out and found a job. She made me stop feeling like a layabout. Funny thing was, I went to her granddad, as her dad has never been on the scene, and said “I want to ask for your granddaughter’s hand in marriage”. This dottery old man said “why only the hand? What’s wrong with the rest of her?”

I do not love her any more, but we were married for 13 years and I can’t listen to the song that was played at our wedding, but she is the mother of my children. She made the choice of trading me in for a younger model, and every year I wonder what it was that I did wrong to have caused her to walk out. People tell me that I did nothing wrong and no matter what, I could do nothing to change it. Maybe that is true, maybe it isn’t, but it will never stop me wondering … If I had said no to her going to the festival, if I had agreed what the tarot said and moved “if you do not move, your marriage will collapse”. If she was to ask me back now, I would tell her to choose her exit – door or window.

She cheated on me not long after I had had my cortisone injection, and I forgave her for that as I had recently become unable to move properly. I could have (should have?) made changes after that. Anybody else would have thrown any trust out of the window, but she told me it wouldn’t happen again, so I believed her and trusted her. I didn’t say no to her going to Download Festival, I didn’t say no to her going to the pub or out with her friends. I am not that kind of person. I can’t hold someone on a leash and dictate what they can or can’t do. It’s not fair on them. Maybe that’s my weakness.

It was on our thirteenth wedding anniversary that she decided enough was enough. She had met someone at Bloodstock Open Air music festival and “fallen in love immediately” with him. A friend of mine who usually went with her said “oh I thought it was just her getting off with someone like she normally does”. So it started me wondering – how many times had she done this? How many times had she cheated on me while she had gone somewhere.

Her change wasn’t even a subtle one. It was instantaneous. She went away seemingly happy, and came back a different person. for thirteen years we had gone to bed at the same time. Even when I used to stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning to watch the Grand Prix, she would grab a blanket so she could curl up on the sofa beside me. Then when she came back on our anniversary, she went out for the evening. When she came home, she didn’t want me going to bed with her. She didn’t want hugs, kisses, she even seemed repulsed at the thought of me touching her even as I was passing by.

I know I did things wrong in my marriage, every body does. After she left, I contemplated suicide a couple of times. I take 12-14 tablets a day, there was nothing to stop me taking them all in one go, was there? Then the thought hit me – my children. How could I do that to them? I had a couple of friends at the time who would not leave me on my own. I also felt like a jinx. It seemed, then, that every couple I spoke to, their marriage / partnership broke. It severed friendships as well. Friends who I had known for years just suddenly turned away from me, fuelling even more my thoughts of “what have I done”

I used to role-play every Sunday. I never missed it (except once when I had an abscess the size of Norway). Since the divorce, the only reason I took out my role-playing books was to sell some of them. After all, if I’m not playing the game or running the game, why keep them? I sold them to a friend who does still play. I don’t see him often, so not sure if he uses them.

I became closer friends with someone during the months after the split, and for a while it seemed that we may be something more than friends. Unfortunately though, I made a huge error and very nearly lost the entire friendship. I fought for days to try to stop that from falling off the edge, and I managed to do so (thankfully).  During this time, I was speaking on and off with someone else, due to the fact that this woman I was just speaking about had put an article on their Facebook page about spousal abuse. It got to the stage where it became more than a friendship and I eventually moved in with her, but that turned out to be a huge mistake. I have a post on that here on my blog so I’m not going to go into that, and this post isn’t about that stage, it’s about an earlier one.

Friday August 18^th 1995 I was married. It was, until my kids were born, the best day of my life. Monday August 18^th 2008 she came back from a music festival and decided that our marriage was over. Friday August 21^st 2009 my Decree Absolute came through. So this month holds what used to be one of the best, and now one of the worst, days of my life (not including May and June when my kids were born which are by far THE best days of my life)  13 years of marriage were gone. She says that she used to lay in the room listening to My Immortal by Evanescence and cry. I don’t know if that’s true, but it has always hurt me to think that I must have done something seriously wrong in order for her to feel like that and that she needed someone else. 

Maybe in time I will just look back at it as a part of my life as a learning stage. A stage that was only necessary so that my two wonderful children could come into the world. I’m hoping that eventually I’ll be able to get at least some of my friends back who decided to take sides. Although some of the things I heard about some of them, I don’t know how many of those I can trust any more either. That whole time is fresh in my mind as if it was yesterday. It’s odd how I can relive both stages at the same time. 

“Love is: giving someone your heart and trusting them not to break it”

“Tears are words your heart can’t express”

Kelly Clarkson says in her song the words I feel, and probably will always feel.

I will not make
The same mistakes that you did
I will not let myself
‘Cause my heart so much misery

I will not break
The way you did, you fell so hard
I’ve learned the hard way
To never let it get that far

Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side
So I don’t get hurt

Because of you
I find it hard to trust
Not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you, I am afraid

I lose my way
And it’s not too long before you point it out
I cannot cry
Because I know that’s weakness in your eyes

I’m forced to fake
A smile, a laugh, every day of my life
My heart can’t possibly break
When it wasn’t even whole to start with

Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side
So I don’t get hurt

Because of you
I find it hard to trust
Not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you, I am afraid

I watched you die, I heard you cry
Every night in your sleep
I was so young, you should have known
Better than to lean on me

You never thought of anyone else
You just saw your pain

Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side
So I don’t get hurt

Because of you
I tried my hardest just to forget everything
Because of you
I don’t know how to let anyone else in

Because of you
I’m ashamed of my life because it’s empty
Because of you, I am afraid

Because of you
Because of you