December Depression

Its almost here again…  December.

I have promised myself that I will NOT let myself get depressed again this year.  I will NOT allow the junk my life to spoil the happiest, most loving time of the year.  Now I am  not so sure how I will do that.  I already feel the sadness creeping in…  How can I forget?  How can I see the church decorated in all it’s glory and not remember that day?  How can I listen to the radio and forget Jim Brickman’s The Gift was our wedding song, or that I walked down the aisle to Pachelbel’s Canon when Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas Canon plays?

Christmas was the inspiration for our wedding.  The beauty and joy of this time of year.  The togetherness, the love, the hope…  Now it is my downfall and I don’t want it to be.  I want to enjoy this Christmastide.  I don’t want to cry when I listen to B101.  I don’t want to deflate when I look out over the sanctuary and see the candles and the greenery and the ribbons.

Friends, what do you do to keep the sadness at bay?

Alone again… 12/17/09

This is the first time that I felt that I had so much inside that I just needed to get it out…  This was nine days after he told me he was leaving…

December 17th, 2009

Alone again.  I am used to being alone.  His work schedule usually takes him away.  I have no doubt that is where he is.  Early mornings, late nights.  Not every night; most nights he is here in time for dinner.

He has shut off from me for so long, that I am used to that kind of alone, too.  Content to accept any type of contact, cuddles, hand-holding, touching slightly.

But this kind of alone is painful.  He walks out of the room and I fall apart.  The hole in my chest comes back.  The painful abdominal cramps start again.  I know that one of these times, he will walk out and never come back.  He is already gone in his mind, even if he is here physically.  He is no longer mine, his mind on the future where he can find someone he can be with for the rest of his life.  He was that person to me.  My future.

He says he wants to stay…  for now…  but doesn’t know what is good for me.  What is good for me is having a husband who loves me and cherishes me.  What is good for me is having a partner, a person who is in this with me together.  I guess that he isn’t good for me, but he is who I love, who I need, who I want, flaws and all.  And this is a huge flaw.

A gay man fell in love with a straight woman.  He was the best liar, he could hide his true self from even himself.  But not from me.  I have known and buried it deep.  Then I knew again and it moved up in my consciousness.  Then another clue and I was more aware.  And another, and another.  Suddenly I couldn’t trust this person anymore, this person who was my husband, my best friend, my companion, my confidante.  How could he do this to us?

But there is no us, he says.  I’m gay, he says.  Yes, I knew that.  What did I expect when he realized it himself?  When he allowed himself to admit that he was wrong, that he created a life for himself that he didn’t want anymore?  I don’t know what I expected.  I have spent so long hiding and pretending that maybe I thought he would stay with me for the sake of our family.  After all, he says I’m his best friend, too.  Why can’t he just stay with me?

Why do I want him to? He has been my companion, my best friend, my co-parent, my former lover for half of my life.  Half of my life I have spent with this man.  I expected to spend the rest of my life with him.  I stood by him through graduate school, when he said he couldn’t go on, I encouraged him.  Reminded him of what his goals were, that this was what he wanted, what he has always wanted.  I stood by him when he was sick, over and over I sat in the hospital with him, holding his hand, helping him eat, helping him wash, helping him grow stronger.  I stood by him when our dream, our business, didn’t work, didn’t make money.  When we had no money, we stayed together.  I stood by him when he was struggling with finding himself, a long process.  Now he has found himself and he wants to leave…

Why do I want him to stay? Because through it all, I still love him.  I still need him.  He is still the person that I want to be with, but I am not that for him.  He wants to find someone who he can spend the rest of his life with.  Because what I have given him and given up isn’t enough for him.  How do I not take that personally?

Please don’t be upset, he says this morning.  I’m trying, I say.  I am trying.  Every second of every day since last Tuesday, I have tried to not get upset.  I have tried to keep breathing.  I have tried to hold it together.  But I can’t.  He has already moved on, I am still here.  Loving a man who doesn’t want me, that doesn’t need me, and that means nothing to him.  The loving and needing mean nothing to him.  He says that I am still his best friend.  He loves me but not the way I deserve to be loved.  What about what I want?

And what is it that I want? Do I really want to spend more time with someone who doesn’t love me, desire me?  Do I really want to continue to question every phone call, every email?  I have already blocked the texting function on his phone, after all it is in my name, so that I don’t get tempted to see who he is writing to when he leaves me.  He says there isn’t anyone else.  But what about that person, supposedly from California, who has texted and emailed him on our work email, telling him he missed his voice and that he loves him?  Who is that?  No one he says.  He’s not even in contact with him anymore.  And I am supposed to just believe it.  I want to, but I don’t.  He has finally gotten smart and made himself his own Yahoo email address that I don’t have access to.   But how can it be no one?  How can this man who I love just throw “I love you” around to some faceless person so casually?  Does it mean nothing to him?  So what does it mean when he says he loves me?

But through all of that, I still want him here.  But why?  Love?  Safety?  Security?  Why do I want him here?  For the kids?  The kids…  how hurt they must be, they will be. They overheard our fight, when he said he was looking at an apartment in the city.  My son is treating this like an adventure.  If Daddy gets a new house, then we’ll have two, oh joy!  My daughter is not saying anything, but then again they don’t know much.  They know that he wants to move out.  But not why.  What do I tell my kids?  Daddy wants to find someone else to love because my love isn’t good enough for him…  No.  Daddy wasn’t sure if he was gay or not, so he went along, married me, had two beautiful kids and then one day decides “okay I am gay”.  No.

So what do I tell my friends? I have hidden this from them for so long, never willing to say it out loud.  Now all of the sudden he is leaving, I am falling apart and they are saying “I never would have guessed”.  How do I explain that I don’t care?  That I want him here for as long as he is willing to stay?  No one can understand that.  Let him go they all say.  It is better for you that way…  I don’t know what is better for me.  All I know is that since December 8th, I haven’t eaten well, I have been sick, I have had breakdowns every day, several times a day.  But why?  Because something is ending and I don’t want it to?  Because he is leaving despite everything I have given him?  Because I am afraid to be alone?

What have I given up by being here? The usual, my career, my life that could’ve been, love that could’ve been.  But what about myself?  I have turned into someone who I don’t like, simply from hiding who he is.  From pretending everything is okay.  From never talking about the elephant in the room.  From believing the lies every time and then hating myself for believing them.  From being told I am making things up, that I am crazy, go take a pill.  I am mad and sad and frustrated all of the time.  Who is this person?  I don’t like her at all.  She is short with her kids, short with her friends, short with her parents, her family.

Eleven years being married on December 12th, 2009.  Happy Anniversary, by the way I’m gay and you knew it so just deal with it.  Oh and Merry Christmas, too.  We got married the December after he graduated.  I was so proud of him, him on my arm, he wanted to be with plain, ordinary, little me.  The church was so beautiful, Christmas greens draped all over, ivory ribbons hanging, candle flames dancing.  I was so happy, WE were so happy.  December is an anniversary month.  We were engaged in December 1996.  We got married in December 1998.  My life ended in December 2009.  Everything goes full circle.

I am scared.  Terrified of what the future will bring.  Our kids are 9 and 6.  What is this going to do to them?  Not even that Daddy is gay; we are very open and accepting of that.  No, that he is leaving, but not really he says.  He will still be around – help me with things around here.  Is that what I really want?  I don’t know.

I don’t know what I want.  But I know that I am deathly afraid of letting him go because he will never come back.  How can I live without him?  How do I survive?