Triumphant Return, Part Two

Saturday

I woke up early and finished getting caught up on the all the surfing I hadn’t been doing. I showered and got ready to go to coffee, so I could update the old blog-er-ino. About the time I was ready to go, X2B, who either woke up before me, or was still up from the night before, asked if she could go. I told her I was ready to go and she needed to hurry. She commented that she needed to go to a “good” grocery store, not Walmart, to get stuff to make some bean soup thing. After 45 minutes, she is still in her nightgown making her shopping list. Another 45 minutes and we are out the door. We get to the coffee shop, and my favorite little barista calls out to me by name, reminiscent of Norm from Cheers, and comes to take our order. The first awkward moment came when she couldn’t remember X2B’s name after yelling mine across the store. The second came when she said that she had been reading my story on the other Blog. Luckily, I was behind X2B and was able to convey the concept of: “NO!!!!” which she was able to correctly interpret. Having coffee was a repeat of dinner the day before, no conversation. Granted, I was working on the laptop getting bills taken care of, but she had her plethora of diversions as well. After coffee, we went to the grocery store where I wandered around talking on the phone giving various people the “I’m home” conversation. An hour later, she is ready to check out. The bill comes to $66, and she looks at me expectantly. *sigh* our money, my money again. I pay and we go home. She says she needs to get the two older kittens taken in to try and get them adopted, and asks for my help writing the blurb. “It has to be sad, so people will feel sorry for them and adopt them,” she tells. I tell her that I could say they were rescued from the pound and go great with a orange sauce, but it didn’t go over very well. I start typing stuff, and she is looking over my shoulder telling me what to write until I get frustrated and snap at her. Then she decides to do it herself. I tell her I am going to the storage unit.

Leave the house, call the in-laws to see where they are so I can talk to them. They were going to get something to eat, then head closer. I tell them to call me when they are done eating. I head over to the grandfather in laws house. I needed to tell him what was going on for two reasons: One, I owe him money and needed his address to mail the checks to him. Two, I wanted to see if it was ok for either me or X2B to stay there for the two weeks before I leave. In talking to him, I am a bit surprised to find myself getting a bit emotional for the first time about all this. He tells me, basically, that he isnt surprised and that he cant blame me. I leave there and call the in-laws, and we set up a meeting. I tell them and get pretty much the same response. So far, I am surprised by this. One even suggested that we take the opportunity to tell her that everyone else is sick of her shit too. I ask that they not do this as it may be more than she can take at once. I finally go home, and she is in the midst of making her soup, and it is too late to take the kittens in.

I dink around on the computer and eat her soup, which wasn’t very good, considering how much the ingredients cost. She did her usual eat in front of the TV while I ate in front of my computer, then I tell her I am going to go back to the storage unit. I call A, who had come up in case I needed a rapid relocation, and he met me at the storage unit then we went and got a drink while talking about things. After a while, I went home and everyone was in front of the TV. I decided to stick to my original plan and tell her the next day and went to bed.

Stay tuned, next episode: The Reveal!

Call Off the Cops, I Survived

So, I managed to get back to Texas. As the week wore on, I got less and less sleep. I really was not looking forward to all of the difficult conversations I was going to have when I got there. I had a plan: On one day, tell the affected family members in order to make sure there was someone around to ensure the safety of either myself or X2B. Also, I wanted to make sure that there was a place for one of us to stay if needed until I got my stuff out and I was on my way. Then the next day, have the dreaded conversation with X2B to drop the bomb.

The plane hit the ground and rolled to the terminal. As soon as we were allowed to turn on our cell phones, I did so. In about 2 minutes, it rang. X2B was calling to see if I was here, and to let me know that her father had gotten angry waiting for her and left without her. I got to the sidwalk and lit the much needed cigarette, and the father-in-law called to see if I was out of the air and let me know he was arriving. After straightening out an arrival gate miscommunication, he picked me up. He immediately started griping about X2B and her not being ready to go when they needed to be gone. He also told me that him and the cow-in-law would be going car shopping the next day. I told him that I needed to talk to them both, and that X2B couldnt be there or know it was happening. I am actually impressed that he didnt try to press for more information.

We get to the house and there is the expected greetings and hugs, then I was told that X2B had a therapy appointment in an hour. I agreed to take her, and we left thirty minutes later. Dropped her off and went to put gas in the car and make the “I made it home safe” phone calls to everyone. I arrived back to pick her up and played with the PSP in the lobby while she wrapped up. She told me that she only had to do 10 minutes on the stationary bike and we could go. As we were about to walk out, she remembered she needed to make her next batch of appointments. She had to fill out some more paperwork. It took her an hour.

Remaining smidgen of a doubt is dwindling at this point. It seemed like just another day, not the joyous reunion after 5 weeks apart a happy couple would be expect. I was hungry, so we went to a restauraunt to get some chow. She took in her magazines and other distractions. The smidgen was gone. Completely destroyed. A quiet meal as she read and ate her nachos. She asked if we could go to the comic shop on the way back, which was fine since I wanted to see if there were any cool clearance items that got put out while I was gone. We get there, and it takes me about 10 minutes to see everything I needed to see and realize there was nothing I was willing to spend money on. She needed to keep looking, however. So, I am wandering around the store, looking at things I didnt really have an interest in. The new girl that worked there, kinda cute, was standing at the gaming table and asked me if I wanted to learn a funny game. She described it as “made for kids, but will be used by drunk adults.” We talked about things, and after a few minutes, I realized we were kinda sorta flirting with each other. X2B was still looking around, mostly oblivious. Her wandering took her within earshot and she piped in a comment, then wandered around some more. Cute Girl had to go the front to take a customers money, so I started wandering again. Customer gone, and I am looking at the funny buttons and magnets on the counter. Cute Girl and I start talking about them, and laughing at a few, when X2B wanders by again, grabbing my ass to mark her territory as she went by. The old “Just because I dont talk to you it doesnt mean you can talk to anyone else” ploy. My first wife did this same thing to me when she was leaving me. I related this anectdote to a friend, who commented that it really sucks when your wife cock-blocks you.

I wanted to go to the Used DVD store, and dropped X2B off at the fabric store. I looked around, taking my time, knowing how she is in the fabric store. I was starting to get really tired, I had been up early to catch my flight, so I went to get her. It took an hour to get her out of the store. Which, considering her track record in that place, is pretty good. Finally got home and dinked around on the internet a while, since I had been suffering from wihdrawal, then went and lay down. I was asleep before she came to bed. So endeth the triumphant return.

The Clock is Ticking Down

In less than a week, I will be back in Texas. The countdown has started, and I am getting even less sleep. I have been running the scenarios through my head, and doing the 9 steps ahead chess game. My friends, this will not be pretty. The worst part, is I have many things in mind to bring up that signifies the reasons why I am leaving, but apparently the closing of the joint account and the time away has been a minor wake up call. For instance, one of the reasons that I gave her concerning the closing of the account was that she never did anything for me. I have detailed this in another entry, another is the forgotten birthday. In phone conversations this week, she has managed to let me know that my birthday present has arrived in the mail, and that she saw something that made her think of me and bought it for me. Well, shit. I know her, and if I try to bring these things up, she will only remember that she recently did these things, and not recognize that she spent 4 years NOT doing these things. I know some people are going to think that this is a sign that she can change her ways, and that I should give her another chance.

I can only go back in history to speculate as to what would happen in these circumstances. There would be a moderate improvement for about 3 months, then things would regress back to where they were. This is the problem. Were I to give her another chance, that would mean I have to bring her along with the 1300 miles to the new job. Then, if there is no change, I would have to ship her back. And, I don’t have the strength to go through all of this again. The roads have converged, the timing is right, and it has to be now.

I have worked at trying to salvage this relationship. I went to a counselor with her a couple of years ago. I don’t really believe in counselors, I had a bad experience with one during my first marriage. Apparently, the only good grades this guy got in mail order counseling school was Freud, since he said that all of my problems stemmed my penis. I explained to him that my problems were related to the other mans penis that kept finding its way into my wife, but he continued to believe my penis was the one at fault. But, in an attempt to NOT have yet another failed marriage, I tried again. I went, I opened up, I cooperated, I answered the tough questions. The counselor felt, and said as much to both of us, that I had some legitimate issues with X2B, and she needed to be working at improving that situation. There was no follow up visit with us as a couple, because she felt I needed to go alone to the counselor to work out my “anger management issues.” She seemed to think that was where all the problems were coming from. I went to the counselor alone, and discussed my anger issues. Essentially, I told him that while I do have a temper that can get out of control, I have been working over a decade on that since it was a major factor in the failure of my first marriage. I summed it up to him in this way: “She thinks that if I get angry, I have anger management issues. She cant seem to understand that she is the one making me angry.”

And that is the root cause of the failure of this marriage. Her inability to recognize any fault on her part. If I have a problem with something she does, that is just the way it is and I have to learn to deal with it. She accepts no accountability for anything, only that I have a problem because I cant deal with it. If she says that we need to work on our marriage, she really means that I have to work on our marriage because isnt doing anything wrong.

So, anyway. This may be the last chance I have to get any blogging done until after I actually move. If October rolls around and I haven’t posted anything else, please notify the authorities. I would really like the guys from NCIS, you know Mark Harmon and Micheal Weatherly. Those guys can solve anything.

My parents are discussing the possibility of flying to Texas to make the drive to VA with me. I hope they come. My Dad has not been anywhere that he couldn’t be back from in the evening for so long. I think the last time he was on a plane was in the early seventies. I think he needs to get out more, and I really hope he decides to make the trip. Mom wants to go, but she wont go without him because she has done too many things where he didn’t go, and she wants to share these experiences with him. I think they both could use the time away. Mom has only visited me twice since I moved away in my early twenties, Dad never has. He needs to see more. Speaking of Dad, he recently started doing stuff with the Veterans in the local community, and he was a part of the color guard for the Memorial Day services. He carried the American Flag, and I was so proud.

Revelations

Obviously, from the past few posts, I have been extraordinarily introspective of late. I went off on Sam the Fucktard, but it also got me thinking a bit. While planning the post, I was thinking about all off the things that I have done trying to make things work. But, being the kind of person I am, I was also trying to see if there are other things I could have done. Can I really, truly say that I have done everything I could possibly do? Sam did bring about two revelations. One, that I haven’t stated my age in this blog, so Sam may have actually thought I was dumping a girlfriend, instead of a wife. I am 39 years old,not in high school, so I tend to give things a bit more thought as far as long term repercussions go. Two, that there is no way I can ever try everything. There will always be something else I could do. If nothing else, just the “give it more time” will always be there, until the day I die.

The more I have thought about this whole thing, the more a phrase my Uncle used comes to mind. Bullshit to Worth Ratio. Essentially, this means that some things are worth a certain degree of bullshit. For instance, buying a car. Unless you have a shitload of money laying around and can pay cash, you have to put up with the bullshit of a car loan and the associated interest, making of payments, etc. Having a car is worth the bullshit, the ratio balances.

So I have been thinking about what my marriage provides me. What are the benefits I get out of this relationship to quantify the amount of bullshit I put up with? In order to answer this, I have gone back in time to my own past, remembering what it was I was missing between marriages that made want another relationship. The answer is companionship. The act of sharing experiences with another. We were on a road trip back to Texas and were stuck in a construction zone. We were only 30 miles away from the Golden Spike National Monument. I mentioned that I had driven past that exit for the golden spike literally hundreds of times, and never gone to see it. She said we should go. I told her that that was what I had wanted to get married for, was to share experiences with someone else. This remains true.

I am about to move to an area of the country that has a ripe history. The area is beautiful, there is so much to see. And I doubt that I will spend a lot of time going to these places when I get moved here, because I wont have anyone to share it with. I know this from experience. I love showing things to people. Especially when I know the area. I loved being able to tell A&W the sites to see when they were with us in Idaho. I loved being able to tell a lady I work with the same places when I found out she was going to that area.

X2B and I have talked on the phone pretty much every night that I have been gone, mostly, I think, because that is what you are supposed to do when you are in a relationship and one of you is away. This is more talking than we have done in years. More sharing. It is rather disconcerting to know that the best way for us to get along and have any kind of meaningful discussion is to not be anywhere near each other. We may be able to be friends after this, but I dont think that she will have the capacity. There is a very real probablity that when I pull away in the U-Haul, it will be the last time I ever see her. We dont have any kids together, so there really wont be any reason to remain in contact. At one time, she was a very good friend, before we screwed it up by getting married. I will miss that friend, I have been missing that friend for quite some time now. I can only hope that by eliminating the marriage, I can regain the friendship. But I doubt it.

So, in closing, I know that I have painted a picture of an angry man who hates his spouse, but that truly is not the case. I just cant handle the lopsided bullshit to worth ratio anymore.

And I will be sad to see it end, but I am excited about the prospect of starting anew. It is a difficult concept to wrap my little mind around.

A Momentous Occasion

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have reached a new milestone in my blog. I have had several comments, I have had a couple of decent hit days, but not until yesterday had I attracted a Troll. So, today, I direct my comments to you, Sam the Troll.

Sam, how I wish that I had started blogging a long time ago. That may have allowed you to see my single post sooner, and you could have offered your vast insight into the issue at hand before I came to my current crisis. It is so obvious now that you have pointed it out after reading one entry into my life story that you have the ability to ascertain the thoughts and motives of people you have never met, and you also can glean the entirety of my relationship issues from a few minutes reading.

Now, for the subtitles for the sarcasm impaired.

Look, Sam. If you had read the blog you took the time to comment on, you would have seen that I had discussed many of the things that had been building up. If you had a reading comprehension level higher than  an autistic ape, you would have seen that the birthday being forgotten was the straw that broke the camels back. If you had gone back and read past posts regarding this, you would have seen some of the issues that have brought me to my current state. You would have been able to see that I have spent years giving and hoping that the issues would be resolved and worked out.

But it is so much easier to assume that I am ending a relationship over a forgotten birthday. So much easier to berate me for being selfish when I have been precisely the opposite to a truly selfish person for years.

In closing, Sam, I offer you a sincere and heartfelt STFU, fucktard.