It’s only been three days, actually 2 since you’re here and I’ve gone through so many emotions already and in just one day I’ve been ready to ask/tell you to leave. I
I didn’t finish the last letter for the same reason I hadn’t written one for so long, I just keep thinking how futile it is considering you’re not going to see them. But right now I can’t even finish it because what I’d been going to write about is now happening…. your’re here! There’s so many good signs about you being here at this time time, including as I was saying in the last post, that it’s actually an anniversary, not one I’d want to mark but one nevertheless. There so may things to say to express and so many things I’m feeling but right now as I sit here having turned off my anesthesia, the tiv, the only thing I want is you. I want to be stretched out on you, against you nose to nose, belly to belly, feet sandwiched betwen yours till I lose myself in you. I crave the way we use to hold each other, wrapped and surrounded, enveloped by warmth and protection as you pull me closer like you’re pulling me right into you. I’m aching, in more places than one, as I suffer through this drought.that you’ve left me in. I was managing but to know that you’re here now, just a few feet away because you havn’t chosen to make your way back to your marital bed, has just inflamed and ignited a desire and a yearning in me for the fires we used to burn. I’m burning up with yearning for the empty place in me to be filled with you, every last inch of you!!! Your body belongs to me as mine does to you. We’re not suppposed to deny each other without mutual agreement. What do you think is happening with me?! Do you think my feelings just dried up and died when you left!? I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, and I haven’t even seen you yet!!! All I can think of is climbing into that bed and claiming what’s mine….every inch….
I don’t know how you can just shut your mind to us and to the memories contained in these walls, much more the last 20 odd years of our lives….I guess you’re anaesthesising yourself as well but to what end….what’s the point of this separation and starvation… My loins are heavy and my breast ache… my lips are parched and my tongue just want to dance as it used to…..
The 25th of this month will be 3 years since that fateful night when you suggested that we not call each other for the 2, nearly, 3 months that we were going to be apart. You said we should see whether we would miss each other or want to call each other. I guess if I’d known and read some of the information I’ve read since this saga started I’d have reacted differently. As it was, coming from the last few months of you proclaiming unhappiness but not wanting to go to counselling or even to discuss what was the source of the unhappiness and my intuition that your affections were being engaged elsewhere as you sought every reason to find fault and fight with me, the locked phone and calls being taken away from me, I went ballistic. I was angry and hurt and totally at the end of myself! We We had just come from our son’s graduation, where we’d celebrated your birthday, you reluctantly, and you’d just made love to me two nights before. I knew things were boiling around in your head but you just kept saying you were unhappy and were not willling to do anything about it. That should have been the clue.
This is the third Christmas we are going to be spending apart!! I don’t even think I can describe how I feel. I’m one person on the outside, laughing, talking, being and doing everthing I need to do. Well not quite as concentration is not great especially as I keep staying up late and medicating myself with the computer or tv.
This is going to be our life going forward? This is what you want for the future, our children and grandchildren not to be able to have their parents and grandparents sitting at one table, sharing a meal and the love of the family they created??!!!!
So you sent a text message. One which I didn’t get until after midnight on 29th when I sorted out my phone and messages started coming in. I’d told you my phone wasn’t accepting messages but you still chose that method. Not a phone call and definitely not a gift. You informed me you didn’t want one because you didn’t deserve it, so what’s the reason for not sending me something. It couldn’t be that I don’t deserve it! I don’t know which is better. The first year after your pronouncement, you called saying you don’t know what to say, the second year you sent maybe the ugliest flowers you could find with a note about finding peace with MY God and now this year just a text! Each time you’ve made sure you are not in the country when my birthday comes around and then you make some lame contact. The irony is that even with the ugly plant/flowr thing you sent there were 3 red roses! Just like when you sent the mother’s day flowers making sure to stay away from red roses but ended up declaring passion and friendship with purple and yellow flowers.
It’s really a shame. You keep treating me how you feel instead of how I deserve to be treated. You say you look at me you see a person that you’ve hurt so when are you going to stop hurting me?
So another birthday has come and gone without you here celebrating it with me. and celebrating me….!! It still seems so unbelievable to me that you’ve walked away from everything we had and refuse to listen to anything or anyone else that says we can make it. Others have made it with far worse situations, and there are tools and stategies and most of all there is God. I keep praying that you will be restored to a right relationship with God and that you will give him all the pain and hurt and anger that you’re carrying. I keep praying you’ll rely on the strength of Christ to heal you at the very core of you where the depression and anger lie, which came first I don’t know. What I do know is that God has allowed these walls to be broken so that new ones can be built on the foundation that is Him.
I was hoping, praying, that today would be the day you came through the door saying you’re sorry and that you love me and want to make it work. It didn’t happen. And I hurt and as no call came and no flowers, a part of me, the part you hold, was in turmoil not knowing whether to be glad that you hadn’t sent me some ugly flowers and distant card like last year or sad that you hadn’t acknowledged my birthday at all. You told me you didn’t want a gift for your birthday but I didn’t tell you any such thing so why haven’t you bought something, sent something? But then is there anything that can substitute for the fact that you’re not here? That you’re not coming from the right place? What does a gift or birthday wish mean from a man who’s hurting you everyday by his refusal to be your husband. I’m so confused, so tired, so drained, so bereft of the arms that use the hold me and the family that we used to be. I am trying to figure out your state of mind. How can you not feel something wrong, something lacking , when you’re not there beside the person you’ve been with for 28 years.
This is the third birthday that has passed since you started us down this road and the second since you left me for good last year. and I’m trusting God it will be the last. I believe and stand on God’s word that He will complete the good work He started and, unless there’s something you’re not telling me, we were a good work. So I’m just trying to be still
“Lord I believe in you, I put my trust in you. Let this whole world say what they may no one can take my joy away. Lord I believe”
So I haven’t written in a long time. As usual it’s not because I’ve got nothing to say, it’s just the fact that I’d rather say it to you. I’d like to scream at you in anger when I feel that way. I’d like to be able to sit down and reminisce with you about our life together, good and bad. I’d like to have a frank and thoughtful discussion about where we went wrong, what we did and didn’t do. But most of all I’d like to engage in a fruitful and positive discussion of the way forward, hopefully to the life we hoped for and dreamed about fulfulling the commitment we made for our marriage to be an example to others.
I don’t think this is what you were thinking about when you gave your speech at our wedding …
I really don’t know why you came. I’m not sure you know why you came. I know I had the dilemma of being torn between wanting to see you, hoping that today would be the day you came home for good and wanting to tell you no to avoid the pain and hurt of the constant rejection. I can only pray that everytime you walk away it gets harder and harder and you begin to question and ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing.
The truth is on one hand you are being quite honorable in thinking that you’ ve messed up too many times and too badly to deserve me and this marriage but on the other hand you’re making your mistakes more important than your right takes and destroying your reputation and family in the process.
I thought I was ready to write because I need to get the words, ideas, themes, anger, hope every conversation that has been reverberating in my head until I push it away with the TV or by focusing on the God of our salvation and the healer of out life. But as I look at the page and think where to start I just feel tired, weary, what’s the point of sayig when you’re not hearing. Now I’m sitting up at 3am in the morning because I’m trying not to think all the painful thoughts associated with the current situation. You back here stopping by for an evening ….I don’t even know what you’re thinking. I know you’re not thinking of me though, not the way you should but I’m trusting God for the change in me and in you that He will complete the work he started in us…
Letters to My Husband 