I laid in bed for a couple hours but didn’t sleep a wink. The sound of thunderstorms echoed from my Google Home speakers just as the storm raged behind my eyelids; synapses firing constantly with every burning question and emotion. I could feel my eyes darting back and forth, jittering at lightning speed. Frustrated, I eventually just got up and played more Overwatch to try and occupy my mind. I figured there was no sense in burning cycles trying to understand a truth that wasn’t my own. The only thing I could possibly do was make assumptions, which would only serve to bounce around in my head forever, wasting even more time. I could never really know Summer’s truth, because she would say one thing and feel another.
Eventually I got out with the sun and went to retrieve those things – those bigger things that I had brought over for my family. Being financially-minded, I tried to provide nice things so that Summer could focus on paying down her debts instead. I never did get to actually witness that looming mountain of debt. I only heard stories, as though it was a fictional giant in some kind of fairytale. I just wanted to make sure my family had more than we needed. I thought that actually providing for the family was speaking louder than any words I could possibly muster, but Summer found no value at all in what I provided. If words were all she really wanted, then I accepted the trade and wrote letters to take the place of things I took back. It was over a couple grand worth of just stuff around the house, not to mention the thousands of more dollars invested in things for our family to do, like season passes to Magic Springs, a family set of bicycles, a kayak, a motorcycle, or my own family’s reservation for another hotel room on our planned trip to Eureka Springs in two weeks. Neither one of our houses could even contain it all, so it remained split.
Wanting to know the truth is what drove me mad in the past. I could never understand what motivated Sarah to treat me the way she did. I could only assume it was for her own benefit, either as emotional support, or some kind of backup plan in case something else went sideways. Summer never seemed particularly motivated. She expressed that she only wanted to do things to please me, constantly. She wanted to tell me nice things and do things for me, but she would never accept that I simply loved her the way she was. She projected how she wanted to be treated onto me, and could never see past that singular vision. Conversely, she seemingly wanted to change who I was from the start. Surely, she helped me regain some of what I had lost, but she would never accept me for who I was. She said that she did, but then acted differently, or got upset when I didn’t change enough for her liking.
In the end of it all, it certainly feels as though she was just looking for a reason to leave, or at least looking to see where else she could go. Fussing over who texted who first in the day felt petty. Saying she had to force herself not to text me first just to see if I would text her was passive-aggressive at best. Saying that by not giving holiday gifts I made her feel guilty was completely contrived after tabulating how much money I had spent on her and the kids over the course of our relationship. I always told her that if she didn’t want to be with me, she didn’t have to make an excuse. She could just not be. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her, but rather that I knew I couldn’t really make her feel any kind of way about me. We had to meet in the middle, and all this time I thought we had been.
Even before we dated, I told her that girls tend to jump from relationship to relationship with relative ease, and that guys tend to fall harder than girls. We both fell into stereotypes, and couldn’t communicate effectively enough to break that barrier. Communication is a two-way street though, and she refused any suggestions of counseling to work through her own grief from the past. I would have done anything to help us communicate better, but she outright refused at every single turn. In the end, I have to accept that there are things I can do, and things that I cannot.
I ended the day with a walk to Allen’s house where we did a lot of man-hugging. He gets a little too woman-hatey to be honest, but he’s always there for me as a pillar of support. I certainly did not rebound to some mystery woman that wanted to help me grow stronger, and after two days of spilling my guts, I kind of feel like I’m just screaming at a wall expecting it to budge.
Maybe the only way to move on is to just forget.
And maybe we’ll try sobriety again tomorrow.