Monday, February 13, 2006

The Big X, Part IV: Finally, the End

My mother was his mother, in a way. He hadn’t spoken to his own mother in years and mine was an excellent substitute. So in a way we were both dealing with the same emotions. He was in complete denial. It’s not that I was saying, “Hey, let’s dig a hole in the back yard and throw mom in.” I was being as optimistic as I could be while trying to balance with a bit of realism. When all the experts tell you there’s no hope, you have to at least plan for the worst to some extent. He couldn’t deal with that.

I talked about the things that upset me about my mom’s illness. I couldn’t or wouldn’t open up to the rest of the family and I expected him to let me do so with him but he wouldn’t. He got angry with me when I tried to talk about it. He wouldn’t even accept that there was any possibility whatsoever that she might die.

Also he said he understood that since this was most likely my mom’s last Thanksgiving, her last Christmas, that I wanted to spend them both with her. (We used to swap Thanksgiving between our families and it was technically his family’s turn for Thanksgiving. Christmas we always split. I said I still wanted to go over to his house but wanted to spend as much time as possible with my mother.) It turns out he wasn’t okay with it. Christmas night he started a big fight over it.

I also for the first time ever applied some pressure in the marriage department. I told him that if we really were going to end up married (as he always said), I didn’t understand why we couldn’t plan a simple wedding for my mother to see while she was still alive. Yes, it wouldn’t be ideal but we only had a year.

He resented the amount of time I began devoting to my mother. Honestly in hindsight I can’t blame him for that one. I resented the amount of time I ended up devoting to my mother after awhile, when I saw that no one else in the family was even doing one tenth of what I was. It wasn’t a pace I could keep up. But that is really another topic. For the first time in our eleven years together, I went on a trip without him when I took my mother to Florida to see her brother.

He was spending later and later nights at his parents’ house and leaving me home alone nights. New Year’s came and went. One night the first week of January he was supposed to go out to the bar with his friend that was up from Ohio for the week. I was fine with this until I heard about a storm approaching for that evening. He has been known to drink and drive when he was less than coherent. I called and asked him if he was still going and when he said he was, I asked why he couldn’t just hang out with his friend at home and have a few drinks where it was safe.

He blew up at me. Who was I to question him? He could control himself. If Timmy drank, he wouldn’t drink too much. (Timmy is a known alcoholic who always drinks.) I just didn’t want him spending time with Timmy, he said. I didn’t like any of his friends and I wanted him all for myself, he said. Okay. I had no idea where this was coming from. I had always given him an incredible amount of freedom with his friends. (I honestly didn’t have much choice in the matter since he used to lie to me anyway and since he was the dominant person in this relationship.) Plus, I really liked all of his friends and was constantly encouraging him to spend more time with them.

Well, almost all of his friends. There was closet gay Matt that was secretly in love with the Big X, who I couldn’t help but feel some sort of bizarre rivalry with.

He didn’t come home that night until about 4 in the morning. He came in and saw me, didn’t say much of anything, went outside and shoveled the driveway from the storm, and then left without saying a word. Next night he came home around midnight I think. I asked where he had been all day. Driving around was his response.

Here was where I knew for sure there was something going on. He drove a 1978 truck that burned gas at a rate of about 10 mpg and in the time he was “driving around” he could have driven to the Canadian border and back, twice probably. I told him so.

He started hammering me again with how I didn’t like his friends and was jealous of them and only wanted him to ever spend time with me and me alone (which is pretty silly since the reason he was mad at me a couple of weeks ago was that I wasn’t spending enough time with him.) The argument became one of those hours-long blowouts. We discussed why I was unhappy with him, which didn’t have to do with his friends at all. I explained that if after all these years, he didn’t marry me while my mother was still alive, that was something I would always begrudge him. That was just honesty, not an ultimatum, just me telling him how it was.

He told me he couldn’t marry me. All these years and now he finally was honest. He was way too afraid of commitment to marry me. Afraid I’d leave him. I said I’d never leave him unless: 1. He beat me or our children. 2. He cheated on me ever again, which I had made clear years ago. Immediately after I made this statement he suddenly didn’t love me anymore and wanted to end things. Of course, this having been an eleven-year relationship, the conversation continued for a couple of hours after that statement before I finally had enough and threw him out. Before he left, I said, “Just tell me one thing. You can be honest now. It’s over. Is there someone else?”

No!” he said, emphatically. “How could you even think that?”

This was one month after I was told my mother was going to die. It was three days before my birthday. I was devastated. I don’t like to talk about the couple of months after that. Suffice it to say they were dark. I cried a lot. Everywhere.

After the first month I learned he had been cheating on me, that there was indeed someone else. That helped me because now I could be angry. Before I was just lost and confused. I still thought he might come back. The first thing I did when I got home every night in that first month was check my caller ID to see if he’d called. When a car drove by at any time of day or night that I thought might be his, I looked out the window.

Yet despite my emotions, I was strong in one thing: I never called him. I never after that last night together tried to get him back. And when I learned of the other woman (his parents’ neighbor-go figure; with him spending all that time over there) I knew I didn’t even want him back anymore. I could begin to move on.

It was still at least another month before I stopped crying so much. Not all this crying was because of him; don’t give him that much credit. It was because in just a couple of short months, my world as I knew it had fallen apart. My mother was dying, I was suddenly the head of the family; I no longer was part of Tina and X. I was just Tina. I didn’t even know what I was going to do about getting my oil changed anymore. I didn’t know anything.

I didn’t know anything.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a shit.

I dnt understand how ppl can cheat.

U'd just feel too guilty, and if you didnt then theres summit wrong with you.

You sound like you've come out of this really strong thou, which is really good.

Tina said...

Yes, he is a shit! Thank you. I think I have, except for that pesky commitment problem.

I'm definitely in a better place without him than I was with him.

Anonymous said...

Cool,

Ur story is reminds me of my first real relationship, 3 years, then she turned around and said she didn't love me anymore. No1 else was involved, that was last may.

I'm pretty much over it now...

Anonymous said...

N ive kinda been doing the same as you,
got myself a 'buddy'

Ive decided im better off too, there was some stuff about her i wasn't happy with...

I wudve married her thou, i told her that!

Tina said...

Yeah close call for both of us. I would've married the Big X too.