Thursday, April 05, 2007

A Letter To Mr.3

*I found out some disheartening information this evening, and the best way to present it is by posting the email that I sent to my husband. I don't want to give up on this....he is sick and I know that if given the chance we can work through a lot of this. Psychologically, I can't give up...or the past few years of my life have been a waste, and that is something that I cannot accept.

I am probably going to leave a phone message, but I will probably be able to focus my thoughts more clearly here. I appreciate that you thanked me for doing all of the reading, and trying to understand what is going on. I feel like I have been doing quite alot of work on this end trying to keep our marriage going. It is important to me, and I thought that it was important to you.

It is clear to me now that you will not be coming home for Easter, and you might not be coming home for a long time.

Your lack of trust in me is disgusting....you must think that I am the most naive and gullible person in the world. You must think of me as stupid.

I so want to believe that you are in Utah and that you are getting help. I want to believe that you want to make this work. But you are lying to me. When you were in jail, you lied to me about your phone and wallet and wedding ring. When you were in Florida, you lied to me about the cell phone...even after you promised me that you would never lie to me again. I gave you a second chance and you are ruining it. Why tell me an elaborate story about you coming home on a train....telling me in a chat on gmail that you were on the train, coming home...when the phone records show that your calls were still originating from Washington DC? Now the records only go to February 28th, but as you were telling me that you were elsewhere at the time...I have already caught you in a lie.

How many more lies do I have to find out? Why do you keep telling me that you want to be with me...that you want to spend the rest of your life with me, when your actions clearly show that you do not? This, you cannot blame on PTSD....this stems from choices that you have made. And choices that you actively choose, even now, to make by not telling me the truth...even when I have promised not to be upset.

I am not sure what my feelings are anymore. My gut still tells me that you are seeking help....but I don't know where or with whom. I don't know when I will see you again, or how you will get home. Because you probably have no money to buy a ticket from anywhere as you have probably already pawned MY camera and OUR portable DVD player, leaving me to try to pay for the library stuff that you took out and racking up the bills on. I almost feel like it was pointless to even ask if there really was a job. Although I still think that there was. And if you lost the job, I can only assume that it was because you had a problem while in DC. I wondered if you were alright when I talked to you and you had been out drinking with friends. I wonder if it was then that something happened....a flashback based off of our conversation when we were talking about Rwanda...you were so angry with the UN and I was trying to calm you down.

I am oddly calm, and I don't even know what that means.Did I expect this? No. I wanted to believe in you, to trust in you...and I don't know what is real anymore. I do know that I don't want to spend my life alone. I want my husband and the future that we have planned. But I don't want to be strung along, to be lied to. I don't want this uncertainty anymore. I had thought that we were making a breakthrough. You sounded so confident this morning when you said that you didn't regret that you had turned yourself in for treatment. And I was so glad that you were happy with your treatment, that you were learning new things. Maybe I can understand now why coming home frightens you so much....there is so much that you would have to come clean about. So much error. And maybe this is me, being Penelope, endlessly waiting, weaving tales of hope during the day only to unravel them each night. Penelope whose Odyssues comes home briefly, only to have him leave again. I wonder how this story ends? Can we create a happy ending?

I love you.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

as a total outsider to your situation, i feel very emphathetic, however, i really think "Mr.3"'s actions are cruel to you. You deserve much better. Mr. 3 may have suffered from great stress but his actions are cowardly and dishonourable. There is NEVER a justification to do this to someone who loves you.

Do you really want such a man to be your husband? How many times will he use his PTSD as an excuse to bail out of problems? Imagine if you also have kids? You say you don't want to go through life alone, but when I read your comments about Mr. 3, a life you choose with him amounts to you deciding that you will alone, without support -- only his physical presence -- if even that.

Let him go. And move on with your life. You are intelligent, caring, vibrant, and deep. AS someone who has let go of a marriage, it is difficult to be sure. But, once you 'let go' and accept that you are going to move on without him, life becomes amazingly more simple. yes, it will hurt for some time but the pain goes away. I hope you will come to realize this on your own.

I want to tell you you will meet someone else, and you will fall in love again. But, it doesn't even need to happen.

The pain of being abandoned once heals over time ... but what about the pain of being abandoned every single month...week and day... ?