Day 2 - Dawn

Sleeping is frightful at best. I tossed and turned most of the night, always staying on my side of the bed. Its habit, yanno, from years of sharing it with someone. I shy away from sleeping in the middle of his side of the bed. Its too soon. It feels almost like sacrilege to find myself so close to taking over the bed. When R was here, he slept on the left side of the bed. I was always always so very careful not to turn over too close to him and jar his arm or hit it. I would wake up many times a night when I turned over or moved to make sure that I wasn't too close to him and didn't cause him any pain. I still wake up with each and every turn, but he's not there. I wonder how long I will be conscious to his needs though he isn't here.

I got up with the kids and got them off to school. They seem to have bounced back a whole better than I expected. Maybe it's a front. I see the underlying tension and stress in their little faces and their actions with each other. They are trying so hard to be polite and use their manners, but temper tantrums and fights are erupting more often than usual. It is to be expected. They don't understand any more than I do. But just like me, their little lives are going on too even though our home life feels like its stopped and collided with a brick wall.

R didn't call yesterday afternoon, or last night, nor did he show up for the rest of his stuff. I guess he'll get in touch with me in the next couple of days. yay. Just what I need, a constant reopening and salt pouring over my already mangled heart. All I can do is hope that with each time he sees me or talks to me it will hurt him a bit, make him uncomfortable a bit, OPEN HIS EYES to what he is doing to all of us. I'm praying for miracles. I have this inner feeling that this is not over, not by far. I just don't know how much longer I can hold on before I have to make myself break from him and move on. A week, two, three, a month? I don't know. But one morning I will wake up and my heart will say, okay today is the day, enough with this crap. He's gone, he's not coming back, let's kick this in gear and pick up the pieces, we've got stuff to do. It will happen. I just hope it doesn't happen and then he realizes what he has done and wants to come back after I'm already done. I don't go backwards when that happens, I will move forward and that will mean without him.

I was writing in my paper journal yesterday and I said I think one day that R will wake up, he'll want to have the life he promised, and he'll miss us, but I'm scared to death it will be too late. I'm going home when the kids get out of school. I've been in constant contact with my parents this time around. I'm going home and going back to college. This time I will not quit until I graduate. I'm too old to be playing these games of "start my life over" again and again. It's not fair to my kids to drag them through all of this uncertainty and pain. I have to make sure I can take care of them and provide a good life for them no matter what. I don't have the option of finding and relying on a man any longer for promises of a good life, a good marriage, a good anything. I have to do it on my own. Be my own provider, my own security, my own everything.

I don't want to be bitter. But I just don't have much left of myself to give to another person and I just don't want to. I gave more of myself in this relationship in such a short amount of time and its gone. I was and am totally in love with my husband and I don't want to feel this way about another man ever again. I found real true love and it abandoned me. I don't ever want to go through this again.