Gratitude Journal

Day One

At last! A date that was a date. Not a strange interview where I get the distinct impression no one has ever been up to the job, or ever will be for that matter. For once, this wasn’t an exercise in disappointment. Or a strange act of vengeance. A poison arrow of an interaction that misses the mark and hits my heart instead of the stone cold heart of the intended victim. Even then, it isn’t the ex who conspicuously hurt her. It’s one or both parents. That’s where all this begins for us. Even then, it pre-dates our parents by a generation or more. Talk about paying it forward.

Anyway, today was different. Today bloody well worked. What a relief! After all that swiping and liking and awaiting someone to reciprocate. Waiting and waiting for something that doesn’t come. Ignored. Overlooked. On a shelf fit only for dust. Discovering that I am redundant. Unattractive. That I’ve nothing of worth.

Not that I ever wanted to enter that weird, online cattle market. Searching for the real in the unreal. What’s that all about? I could never understand it. It felt wrong. I felt wrong. Why do we have to justify our existence like that? I just wanted to meet people. Talk to them. See what we both had. Explore the world and find something of worth. So many barriers to that. So many distractions and falsehoods. Where are the real people? What even is real anymore?

Sorry.

This must be the come down.

We kissed. I’d had such a good night and I didn’t want to ruin it. Didn’t want it to end. Wanted to pause it and then pick up where we’d left off. I think she must’ve initiated the kiss. Or it just happened. Dunno how a kiss accidentally occurs. One minute we were walking along. The next we’d stopped and we were kissing.

We kissed a lot. I’ve not kissed like that in an age. I felt like a warm cliché after we came up for air. A reborn teenager. It was fun. It was exhilarating.

I like her.

Day Ten

We’ve met up a few time since that first date. We called it casual and I tried to play it cool. Respect her need for space. Allow us both to feel our way. That’s difficult when the anticipation and excitement builds and I just want to throw the table to one side, take her in my arms and kiss her. Hard.

I’ve been telling myself that its best to wait. All good things come to those who wait. She’s haunting me though and the imp on my shoulder whispers to me that I’m running the risk of slipping into the friendzone. The also rans wait and while they stand at the edge of the dance floor of life some idiot literally comes waltzing in and takes the spoils. I don’t want to be left holding two drinks as the life intended for me slips by.

I suggested another evening meal and drinks. I’m hoping that’s the way forward. That I’m not wrong about those kisses. They are a promise of so much more. I’ve kissed other people. Of course I have. These kisses are different. There’s fire in them. No awkwardness. No question marks. They are meant and they mean far more than just mere kisses.

I really like her.

Day Sixteen

I knew it! I was right about those kisses. And they were right about me! I was right about her. Everything was right. She invited me in and just like that first kiss, we just happened. Everything happened. And afterwards, she fell asleep in my arms. I lay there and watched her. Not wanting to miss a single moment. She was smiling contentedly and she looked so beautiful. It was only a nap. Maybe an hour of gentle slumber. As she awoke, she kissed me again and one thing led to another. Slower this time. Gentler. A contrast to the first time that made everything make all the more sense.

Leaving was difficult. I felt like there was the skin of a bubble just beyond the front door. That once I left, there would be no going back. Nothing to go back to. An impossible dream. A fairy tale where I didn’t belong. Me, an impostor. Undeserving of the feelings I was experiencing and the hope emerging from the very depths of me. Not drowned after all. Sunken treasure awaiting discovery.

Have I said how much I like her?

Day Thirty Two

We’ve been getting along so well. My wariness and unease about it being too good to be true is wearing off. Tonight, I talked about my hopes and dreams. I shared what it was that I wanted out of life. This was a bold move. Shit or bust. I knew I might be talking myself out of a good thing. But I had to know. I wanted to understand whether there was the real possibility of us living a life together.

Of course I wanted that. Don’t we all? Isn’t that what our lives are all about. To dare to dream. To share those dreams and be heard. To cease to be alone, even in a room full of people. Sharing a simple look or smile with the one you love and being warmed by a love that exists only for you.

We’d spent the day walking and talking and we built up to those things that we loved in childhood and would seek to replicate in our lives. Simple things that to date have only been dreams. There’s no point in building the palace if you’re going to dwell in it alone. We’ve both led a meal for one existence. Now we can share the kitchen and cook the meals we’ve hungered for, for so long.

To my amazement and joy, she echoed my dreams and aligned with me in such a beautiful way. I stopped walking and held her. I was so happy. That was when I told her for the first time.

I love her.

Day Three Thousand Seven Hundred and Twenty Three

What the feck has happened?

I’ve that phrase running over and over in my head – what the feck! My life is now branded WTF. The question mark shuns those three letters. It knows that there is no answer to where I am now. I’m in hell. I’m in a maelstrom of madness.

Yet I continually seek to explain the madness. I need to explain away my confusion.

I’m going to read the diary entries from all those years ago. I didn’t want to at first. I know that they will hurt. That I will make the acquaintance of who I once was, but am no longer. That I will see his happiness and his hope in that different form of madness that we think is love, but is only lust and infatuation.

Love comes later.

Or it doesn’t come at all. Something dark takes its place and it keeps taking. A one way flow of dread.

How has this happened to me?

What did I do wrong?

Day Three Thousand Seven Hundred and Forty Five

I thought it was going to be OK. I mean it had to be didn’t it? We’ve been together for over ten years after all. That in itself has to count for something. I love her. Always have. Love counts. It has to. We’re nothing without love.

She made me feel like it could work. Lifted my hopes. Now here I am. It hurts all the more for my foolishness. I don’t know what to do. But I do know the pattern by now. We go around and around the hamster wheel and whenever I get carried away upwards I fail to factor in gravity. Fail to remember each and every time she has uttered words of promise that have delivered only pain.

How can someone who loves you, hurt you so much?

Day Three Thousand Eight Hundred and four

I’m still here.

I know, I know. I shouldn’t be. But where else is there?

Besides, no one will believe me. They all think the sun shines out of every orifice of her body. She’s so charming and I’m so lucky.

Problem is, I don’t believe me either. I don’t even believe the pain. I keep falling ill. I’m worried about my immune system. I’ve talked to her about it. At best, she just looks in the space that I should occupy, as though I am no longer there.

I’ve no value.

I don’t count.

Where did I go wrong?

How do I restore this life of ours to where it was at the very beginning?

Our hopes.

Our dreams.

If only we can grab a hold of those again. We’ll be OK. Everything will be OK.

Day Three Thousand Eight Hundred and fifty two

I always wondered whether she was faithful. It was an itch I didn’t dare scratch for fear the skin would part and I’d see the rot beyond. Now I know, only she denied it and when she did, I questioned myself.

Now, as the dust is settling I can see that we’ve been here before. Not with her infidelity. With everything that I thought we’d built between us. There is a regular betrayal that makes me think maybe it’s a constant. But if it is, how did I not see it? Why do I dismiss it and replace it with something I feel is good. I reengineer what’s right before me so that I’ve something to hold onto. I refuse to believe that she’s at all bad.

I worry that she is all bad.

I feel sick.

My body is shaking.

I can’t think straight.

How did it get to this?

She’s a cuckoo in our nest. Yet still I feed her. I am a cuckold. I am living with a betrayal. I feel it. It’s as though there is someone else in this house with us. I fear they’ve always been here. That she brought that with her and she’s relating to that and not me. In a relationship with a fantasy in favour of reality, let alone the reality of me and my love for her.

Worse still, I’m sharing that fantasy. I don’t want to lose everything.

I’m losing my mind.

Day Three Thousand Eight Hundred and fifty three

I confronted her with the proof of her affair.

Reality meeting her carefully crafted fantasy. I have to admit to being scared. Being terrified of her is bad enough, but then I got that it was the truth of it all that I feared. I didn’t want that. Didn’t want it to end. Not after everything we’ve been through. Which is to say everything I’ve given in the hope that we’ll get through whichever bad patch we encounter. I’m totally invested. As should be the case. This is my life. I’ve given it everything. I don’t want to see it all crumble before my eyes.

The prospect of having lived a lie for a decade crushes me. I know I’ve been used. I’ve felt it in my gut for an age.

When her work colleague’s wife contacted me I went numb. An invisible sea crashed in my ears and I think I wanted to die. I didn’t even have the wherewithal to do that though. I am a pathetic contradiction. I’ve given up. Turns out that I’ve not been living for God knows how long, and yet I can’t bring myself to die. That’s how much of a nothing I am.

I wanted to refute the woman’s claims. I wanted it all to go away. This wasn’t happening – my go-to coping mechanism. Explaining the real away with a false fairy tale of our love. A love which I still feel. I do love. But it’s not her that I love. There’s nothing there to love. She doesn’t love herself. Never has. And so she has crafted a mask to hide behind. That mask is a mirror and in some perverted fashion, I see only myself reflected. I love an externalised approximation of myself and that image is eating away at me.

I am doing this to myself, and I don’t think I can help it anymore.

Curiosity killed the cat and won me over. I couldn’t help but engage with this woman. Trish is her name. She’s real. She is made all the more real in the pain of the betrayal my wife has inflicted upon her. Not only her. She has children. Not only her, because we are all connected. Unless of course we are trapped by someone like my wife and removed from the world. Isolated and used up.

Or turned into the same as she.

I felt for Trish, and in feeling for her I felt a stirring of life within me. Perhaps I wasn’t a lost cause after all. Never mind my motivations. You see, I wanted to know. I needed to know. Here I had an opportunity to maybe find out who my wife really is. I actually welcomed that opportunity and it dawned on me that in this there was more hope. Always the hope that raises me up only for me to fall and injure myself yet again. I do this to myself. I can’t help it.

I took some of Trish’s pain upon myself. I thought it to be righteous indignation that I felt, but that quickly deflated as I told my wife that I knew. I stilled my tongue. I did my best to remain calm and only respond. I kept it short and to the point. I didn’t dredge up her past. I refrained from pointing out the cycles of behaviour that resulted from unaddressed trauma. I didn’t tell her that it really wasn’t a surprise. Neither did I tell her how much it hurt all the same.

I tried not to cry. I don’t think I did. But my body thrummed with a debilitating rhythm. Threatening to shake me to pieces. Making me want to be anywhere but in the confines of my own home.

She exploded and had me on the back foot in an instant. I don’t recall much of what she said. I couldn’t make sense of a lot of it. Only that it hurt and that it was my fault. I reeled away and tried to work out what it was that I had done. How I could fix it. I just want to make it work.

Day Three Thousand Eight Hundred and fifty four

I want to leave.

But I don’t know how.

I don’t know myself anymore and what I do know, I don’t like.

This morning she dressed up for work. There was something performative right from the very outset. But there was also the hook. She seemed happy and so I felt happy. Happy and relieved. I remember thinking that it was going to be alright after all. That she’d calmed down and she was making an effort.

Then I realised that she was making an effort for him and she was making darn sure I knew it. Her best underwear. Stockings. Heels. The works. I drank it all in and I wanted her so much.

As she left she casually told me that she would be working late tonight. The way she looked at me as she landed this was both predatory and triumphant. My breath caught in my throat and I felt sick and dizzy. I said nothing as she went off to be with another man.

I envied that man and wanted her all the more. I wanted her back. I wanted to make things right.

She came home late. There was that same happiness as she came through the door. I stood to greet her and she smiled at me as she stood before me and allowed me to take in her appearance. Then she stepped forward and embraced me. Kissing me hard. Kissing me the way she kissed me when we first met. I went with it and I went with it all the way to the bedroom, even though I could smell him on her. Even though there were all the tell-tale signs that she’d slept with him. I didn’t care. All I wanted was her. And it was good. It’s always been good. The best. She even told me that it was.

Afterwards, I lay there next to her sleeping form and tried to work out what any of this means. I was ashamed of my acceptance and complicity. Saddened at my excusing my behaviour. Telling myself that I was somehow enchanted by her. Knowing that I’m making myself worse by accepting anything that she’ll give me.

I would’ve cried if I had that left in me. Instead I lay staring up at the ceiling knowing that sleep would shun me all night and taunt me the following day as I struggled to function.

Day Three Thousand Eight Hundred and fifty five

There was no performance this morning, but I knew. She had no need to send telegraphs to my nervous system. She’d given me another dose of hope and my body knows the script. The come down from the hit.

I went through the motions of a day that I wanted to be over. I knew something was going to happen. It always does. I can remember very little of what occurred at work. I do remember not wanting to go home, but needing to. Having to find out.

And so I did.

There was a car occupying my spot on the driveway.

His car.

I indulged a fantasy of entering my home and expelling the man who would take my place. Then I put my car back into gear and I drove away. I drove away feeling a final emotion. Pity for that poor man.

And then I was empty.