In my attempt to spring clean in summer, I found one of my little black moleskin journals today...and as i opened the cover and scanned the first line, i realized it was from one of our years together....in fact it was from the year of the beginning of our end...
"Once you do this, there’s no turning back."
I wonder if I was trying to tell my future self the emotional rollercoaster was worth it. As I read each page, I couldn’t help but think, that poor girl. Why put up with all that....
The more I read, the angrier I got at this girl, why didn't she leave him then, or then, or then...how many times did he have to hurt her before she realized that their love wasn't beautiful...
Then I got to the part I had spent so many years trying to forget, trying to act like it never happened... I felt the pressure contract around my heart... As i began to read word after word...The truth was right there in black and white...the funny thing about handwritten journals is there's no room for grey parts, the cloudy parts...between all that black ink and the white paper
'I woke up kinda early today, i had this feeling deep in my stomach, the more i tossed and turned trying to get it to disappear, trying to fall back asleep, the stronger it got and suddenly it was like my brain had cleared out all its mess, i opened my eyes and a single flashing sign lit up in my mind...'from this moment on things wont be the same.'
I looked over at the beautiful man lying beside me...in that moment he was truly beautiful to me...but he was hiding something...I could feel it..."
The girl I remember who thought in that moment he was beautiful; conveniently forgot to mention in this passage, ugly side. That was thing about her...she always saw the good...and tried to ignore the bad in people, especially in him...She never wanted to believe that 'the beautiful man', could be so destructive...
I kept reading...
"I didn’t push it, I didn’t complain or say anything...but it doesn't mean I didn't know...I kept trying to act like I didn’t see it, because deep down, I didn’t wanna believe it. I kept trying to say to myself, what he has with me here is too good, and that he'd never want anything or anyone else. But as I woke morning after morning...the feeling wasn't going away and as the time we slept together, cuddled up, spooning or having sex got shorter..I knew there was somewhere else he preferred to be...and then one morning, he simply wasn't there!"
I remember that morning like it was yesterday, i sat up in bed and I grabbed for my phone, heart pounding... As i dialed his number, i was thinking all the worst possible outcomes of this call. Hospital? Police? Dead? It's like my mind wouldn't let me believe the most obvious scenario...that he was in someone else's bed....some how over the years I had come to expect the worst...that day was no different...and then...
He answered, half barking, half sleepy "what", then there it was...her voice in the background. The phone went dead!
I held the journal in my hands, slowly turning the pages over one by one...I felt my body ease back and hit the wall...almost like I didn't have the strength to stay sitting up! The words, the memories where crippling me all over again.
"I cried for about 7 minutes that morning, then my alarm sounded and I got out of bed, washed my face, put on my make up and work clothes and spent the day in meetings and blocking out what i knew!
He was there when I got home in the afternoon...he stood up as I walked through the door, looked me right in the eyes, almost waiting for the fight to begin and then as if the fearful moment had passed, he started to talk about a sporting game he was watching and some celebrity thing he had seen online that day! He stayed home that night and the next and the next! He stayed home with me for almost a week, we had dinners and drinks and movies...every night and every morning we'd make love...I hadn't spoke of it, I did my best to forget it. To forget 'her'.
But then I began to see what was going on! when I was around, he'd walk out of the room or go into the spare bedroom and lock the door, whispering on the phone. In all the time we'd been in that house or the one before, or the one before that, he had never done this before...i knew then...that my husband was having an affair...I knew this; the same way i had known that week before and all those mornings I'd woken with that uneasy feeling in my body.."
I think this is the section where she should have written an editors note:
"I didn't leave, I didn't start a fight or say a single word about it to him...but a wife cant sleep beside her husband and live a life with him everyday and night and not notice the change..."
That's when I saw it....a second journal, laying packed away under some old iPhone boxes.
As i opened to the first page and began to scroll through the words scribbled, I couldn't believe what I was reading. It was the first pages of our story...and heartbreakingly the future seemed so bright! It started out like a different world, two people who were lucky enough to have found each other, passionate, ecstatic, a blissful melancholy. They were so opposite to each other, but some how completed one another...each others ying to yang!
How can he be this amazing person, her hero and their love magical and then a mere 100 pages later...become someone she expected the worst from, who she could never depend on and who she barely recognized.
I began to read aloud...turning page after page as I felt the beauty and the purity of their love disappear and the cracks begin to show. I felt so ashamed for her... Because the signs were there all along.
Sure, he was charming, sexy, funny, always said she was the love of his life, and talked of their future at times. They had kids names picked out and dreams of driving a black range rover (when they got rich) or spoke of all the different places they wanted to live...Perhaps it’s what kept her coming back the past few years. The dream of it all! But shouldn't alarm bells have gone off in her head, when his talk started to turn from their dreams of a future, to him wanting a baby ASAP, because he would be dead in 5 years time...she put pen to paper and wrote that line out word for word...he couldn't see a future with her...
The more i read the more i saw the hopelesssness...a woman so in love that she continued to ignore the signs, i saw so many times, when maybe the stronger woman would have left, but she stayed.
He was a drinker. Back then they both called it “partying,” cause that’s what they did. Early twenties is the time to do that, right? When he drank, he opened up to her and showed a loving, passionate, sensitive, sexy side of him, she'd never seen before...what chick doesn't thrive on that?
Then he got one DUI. Then another. Then another. The funny thing was, that she never actually knew that he had, or even that he would spend nights in jail, until the paperwork would come from the courthouse, which stupidly he'd leave lying around the house. The one similarity between all the offenses was they all had the same unknown vehicle listed... 'her' car!
"Once you do this, there's no turning back..." She wasn't writing it to her, she was writing it to him...But maybe by that stage it was already too late, he had already begun to destroy their life.
Many people say forget the past. It’s the past for a reason. And to be honest, I forgot A LOT of it. This journal was packed away in a box that I hadn’t opened for years. But the thing about forgetting things is you also bury alot too...maybe I never really dealt with the reality of the relationship. Maybe it takes removing yourself from the situation and then remembering or re-reading all the truths, to realize it wasn't beautiful. It was two people who found love in a hopeless place.
These memories and the words written in these journals might skip all over the place, between fears of him cheating, to the love and passion, to violent fights and dreams of dying, but that's how it was...on the good days, we were beautiful, the love we shared was unconditional....but the higher we got on love....the harder we'd fall and when we would wake after yet another fight, torn clothes, wrapped in each others arms, not wanting to let go and afraid to move. The love would take over and in a matter of minutes the pain in our bodies would be replaced by the endorphins, and then it would start all over again...kissing, then sex, the pounding hearts, then the 'I love you' or the promises 'forever'
His words to her...
I can't tell you what it really is, one minute I'm feelin it the next I'm not
It's like one minute you're cold and the next you're hot
I'm always chasin the paper you claim I'm chasin fame
If things ain't going right you always take the blame
We chasin paper planes, I'm tryin to read between the lines
i fabricated the truth, your tryin to see between the lies
It's killin me inside
I'm tryin not to let the pain show
We been holdin on for too long not tryin to let it go
One minute it's all good it's all love
Next minute we fightin finger pointin it's all done
Feelin like the wrong ones no more soul mates
Who will be the first to give in or is it too late
I don't know, all I know is I won't go
You got a heart of gold and I'm not letting go
