It's dishonest to say that Wednesday, 15 December, 2010 was the first day of my crash into darkness. It might have started sometime in May 1991 when I met the man who would become my husband. It might have started sometime in June 1992 when we had our housewarming party. It might have been any one of the events between then and now...the inappropriate attention to other women, the abandoned woman who needed extra help with her homework, the phone sex chat line, the ads for couples seeking...it should have been one of those but to be honest, it wasn't and that is my deepest shame.
I met my husband when we were both serving overseas in the military. If I believed in love at first sight I'd say it was. But I don't. I guess it was lust at first sight. He obsessed me. He was smart, strong, funny, and sensitive. He wanted me. I knew it could all end very badly but it didn't. It didn't end at all. It lasted and it turned into marriage, and marriage turned into a house and dogs and two careers. It was my perfect life. My wonderful perfect life with my headstrong, competitive husband who challenged my conventional view of life and who surprised me daily with his unconventional ideas. He released the sexual person in me and I loved touching him and holding him and all the things that belong between two people who make a vow to share their lives.
But the last 20 years are gone now. They don't exist because they didn't exist. I lived with a man who wasn't the husband I had created in a life that wasn't the life I had created. To look back now is pure pain. Deep and dark, hot and white. So our past must disappear because if it doesn't it will kill me. How do you grieve for a past that didn't really exist?
