Best/Worst

Our wedding day was truly the happiest day in my life, I also believed it was my most beautiful day. That sounds cliché but even as the hours passed on that day, I kept thinking it “this is the happiest I have ever been.” The last day I spent with my husband, in which I had no idea it was going to be the last tender moment spent with him, I did say “well at least you got my most beautiful day.” It was stupid to say. But it was how I felt and still feel.

I think about our wedding a lot and how it was a perfect picture of the times to come and of our roles. The band decided as soon as we walked off the aisle that it was an opportune time to take band photos. I mean, I agree and get it, every band member looked nice at my wedding. I searched around for my new husband, gave up and started to dance. I still felt happy. And it was fine.

The next day my husband invited all the guests to stay another night and I would find myself opening up wedding gifts alone in a room. It was fine right? That was who he was and I was really attracted to him for it, loved entertaining, and the more people the merrier. I liked to be the one who did all the clean up and organizing. I didn’t and still don’t like to come up with the good stories. He is good at stories, and as long as you are not on the brunt end of the story, it’s the best.

Everything is the best/worst to my ex husband. I was once the best, showered with adorations to everyone around and constantly told by other people how much he loved me, like our love was a sweet puppy dog everyone wanted to pet, and now I’m the worst where friends seem to feel uncomfortable around me because I have been painted as the devil incarnate whos cheated lied stole controlled manipulated, I mean think of the deadliest sins and add 20. The transformation seemed to happen overnight. But it didn’t. I just didn’t know. Like when he was taking band photos. I just didn’t know where he was.

Somewhere between those two extremes I exist. To be honest its difficult know where I exist on that scale. Today I swing back and forth from “yes I am the devil,” to “fuck that guy who has never really cherished who I am anyways.” Add spirituality and forgiveness and turning the other cheek and faith and hope and guilt to the mix I think the last four months have more consisted of feeling like a failure who didn’t love enough.

I think the strongest feeling that has been consistent is I wanted/want the opportunity to try to love him better. I would have done anything to have one week one month six months. That is who I am, which I'm sure annoyed him over the years. I don’t give up and my commitment to him was real. I remember when things weren’t going so well he asked me “why do you want to be with me?” I said because “I made a commitment to you and chose you to walk through life together.”  I thought that was a pretty good answer. He didn’t like it. I should have said because of your great bod and charisma and brains and how you shave your chest and wear face masks sometimes.

I like challenges to become a better person. When a person points at me and says you are a terrible wife its just an opportunity to not be one from now on. I can handle it and I see how I could have been better. Everything that I felt unhappy with in the marriage flew out the window when he said it was over. Maybe when you are the one being left its normal to do that. Its unfair. I think it is normal to feel responsible for it all in the beginning, for all the deterioration that has led to this event. And even more normal when the person who is leaving blames you for everything and never says otherwise.

Though, I have to admit, sometimes one party is responsible for it all. My husband told me once, towards the end, he had a dream I killed him. I said “whoa that’s weird.” The thing was, sometimes I did wish he was gone, not dead, but gone. It was because I felt like I was silently screaming please care I/we exist, when I hold your hand don’t pull it away. It was too hard to exist with someone alone, and for him, maybe it was too hard to exist with someone who kept asking for more. I felt guilty when he told me that dream.