When is it enough?

When is it enough?

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself about the situation that I currently sit in. I’m sure that many of you can’t understand what I’m going through; I hope that for your sanity you never have to find out what it feels like to be me (Tom Petty). The crisis at hand isn’t one of faith, though that plays a hand, it’s one of self. Am I being true to myself? Am I being the type of person that in the long run will look back at my life and say, “I was happy.”

How am I? How are things?

Since I last went ahead and posted I will tell you that not much has changed. My day is the same, every day. I go to work, I put up a good front, I don’t want people to know how much I suffer. It’s one thing to put this on the internet where strangers and friends from afar can see my situation and comment on it. I can take that, I can’t take the look. You know the one, the one that you give friends going through a divorce, a death or a job loss. The look of pity and sadness that makes me want to cringe into a corner and pray to God that I’m never seen again.

After that I head home. Usually I buy dinner on the way home. I get home to my wife, my mother in law, my sister in law and my three year old. I buy them all food. I set up a dinner tray for my wife and watch as she takes two or three bites of whatever I bring home and dozes off doing it. Then after she realizes that she can’t eat, she asks for a bowl of cereal with milk which 9 times out of 10 ends up on her or the floor. My carpet will soon be rancid with the smell of spilled milk. I help put our three year old to bed and then take my wife upstairs, where she gets her last dose of meds for the night and put her to bed. This is at roughly 7:30pm in the evening. I am then confined to my bedroom because she might choke or cause a mess and I must make sure that I’m available to help. She doesn’t wake up again until about 4am when she wants to talk, or have me walk her to the bathroom, gets another does of medication and falls asleep again. I wake up at 6am, go through my morning routine and go back to work to do it all over again.

Yesterday I went to Blockbuster to return some movies and went to Best Buy to ogle all the new toys. I called after an hour to see if anyone wanted me to bring home dinner and the first thing I get from my MIL is that Mary has been calling me for an hour and that I haven’t responded. I tell her that’s not the case and even though I’m not lying I’m treated as if I am. Until Mary reads back the number she’s been dialing….her mother’s cell phone number.

She spilled bowls of cereal on herself twice this weekend.

So last night, after another midnight bathroom break I came to the conclusion that I can’t live like this. I’ve tried, how I’ve tried. But seriously I’m constantly sick. I’m in the bathroom all the time right now because my nerves are just shot. I don’t have an appetite, I don’t enjoy any of the things that I used to have fun doing. It’s not helping me, it’s making it worse.

I woke up today with a game plan. I have a friend, R, who I’ve known for years. Almost ten in fact. During that time he’s seen a lot of highs and lows for me just like I’ve seen for him. He’s getting married at the end of this month but he’s been through this marriage with me and has seen some of the worst that it has to offer. In the past he’s offered to let me stay at his place when things had been at their worst. I wish I would have listened to him then. I wish I would have taken his advice.

Instead I’m coming to him this time and asking for help with a place to stay for a couple of weeks. I feel like a separation is what’s needed right now. I feel at PEACE with this idea actually.

I am a firm believer in the fact that if you are making the wrong move, you’ll know it. You’ll feel it in your soul, heart and mind. When I finally made this decision it was the first peace I had felt in a couple of weeks. I don’t know what this means for my marriage, I don’t know what it means for my future but it means that I’m finally taking the proper steps. Maybe this will get her out of her funk. Maybe it will help me make an overall decision.

I’m not a happy person right now. I look in the mirror and don’t know who I am. I go to bed at night and all I wish is that I wouldn’t have to wake up again.

It’s not how I want to live my life….