Signing your life away

This is a dramatic title. 

She may be signing the lease on a new apartment today. This makes me feel so many things. 

I feel sick. 

I feel so much guilt for my part in this separation. Her being on her own will make her life so much harder. So much more expensive. 

All I want to do is say everything is fine, stay, don’t go. We have built a safe and happy life. You deserve things to be easy now after the super hard life you’ve lived. It’s my fault you are not happy, that I’m not happy, that this isn’t working. 

But how am I helping her by keeping her in this relationship? She felt so alone for so long. I’ve been so disconnected from her, unable to be present in this relationship. Holding on to so much festering annoyance, giving off judgment and being just a shadow in a house she lives in. It is not fair to her to be trapped with someone who isn’t fully awake in this relationship. 

She felt so alone she had to get out. She had to take comfort in someone else. Someone who “doesn’t hold a candle to me”. But I have been a shadow of myself, and shadows disappear when you light enough candles. 

As scary as it is, is her leaving really a bad thing? She will be fine, she keeps saying. I know she will be sad. I feel like nobody will ever take care of her as fiercely as I have tried to. Though have I really been caring for her? She has been living in cold judgment. Living with me means that her lifestyle, her decisions, her actions, are all met with silent judgment. 

All because in my heart I am disappointed. 

I am so annoyed at her for her late nights of binge drinking. For making me worry about whether she is ok. Whether she will be ok long term. 

Whether she has those same demons her mom did, just in a different shape. 

Half the time everything is fine. The other half makes me angry that it can’t all be like the other half. And I’m so conflict-averse that I just kept swallowing my thoughts, not saying that I CAN’T LIVE A HAPPY LIFE WITH SOMEONE WHO IS SUCH A VOLATILE DRINKER. 

It makes me so sad. I would have thought she would be over that lifestyle by now, at 41 years old. But no, it’s still there. 

But it’s not fair to her for me to want her to be something different. She may get there. I so strongly hope she does. But it won’t be because of me being passive aggressive. It won’t be because I’m willing to be unhappy and live entirely to support her hopefully becoming a different person. 

That’s not fair to her at all. 

She is amazing, brilliant, so impressive, accomplished, and so fiercely loving. She isn’t helped by me being disappointed when she does things I don’t like. That’s not love - that’s holding someone captive. 

The trick is that I’ve developed a tendency to view my life based on who I am with. I am not an independent person with a well-rounded life, with passions, purpose, or just parts of my week that I look forward to. 

I’m just a passenger that looks forward to moments of downtime. What am I doing all of this work for, if I don’t actually look forward to anything? 

This is not who I am at my core. I’ve become so disconnected from my true self, no wonder I’m not an active participant in my relationship. I’m just slipping into quiet survival mode. 

It’s what I know. It’s what I grew up seeing every day. I know it’s not healthy, but it’s what I know. 

It’s not what I want. 

There is a happy way forward. One where she feels less judged, more free to be celebrated for who she is. More loved. Not judged for laughing too loud, for being up too late. For being too her. 

I want her to be the happiest person in the world. She deserves it. 

There is a happy way forward for me too. It’s gonna take work, and I’m scared of falling into old patterns. I look at relationships like life preservers. Cause my personal story knows being alone as the death of what I knew my family to be. I fear being alone, cause it means I’m that guy leaving his family. 

I need to get over that, cause it isn’t true. 

I can be happy.

I need to connect with what makes me excited. What makes me smile.

I am a good musician. It is part of my story, part of who I was, am, will be.

There will be lots of pain ahead. 

But there will be light.



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