I might be stupid.

I had planned to avoid town entirely in order to avoid bringing the issue to a head when it might be premature. I don’t want to crowd him into making the decision that I don’t want him to make.

But, damnit, I have a right to continue my business too, and there was at least one check waiting for me in the Post Office. I decided this morning to go get my mail. I called him—got the voice mail, of course—just to warn him that I was coming out and to give him the option of talking to me or not. I just left him a quick message saying that I was going to get my mail. I didn’t want him to run across me in town and think I was stalking him.

And town hurts to see. I’ve never in the last few years driven through there without seeing at least one person I knew to wave at. But this morning, it was like I was a ghost. I didn’t see anyone I know, which was probably a good thing if I didn’t want to burst into tears. I managed to save the tears until I was headed out on the highway.

I didn’t drive by his house or the barn. I can see the house from the highway, and I looked, but I didn’t see his truck there. Doesn’t mean that it wasn’t parked in the barn. It took strength that I didn’t know I had to not go by what used to be my home barely two weeks ago.

The longer he lets this go, the more permanent this scar is going to be.

I’ve had my own demons and ghosts throughout this relationship. They whispered to me, “He’s going to hurt you. He’s going to leave you. They always do. You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t hurt you physically.”

Now, that last one was easy to dismiss; I knew he didn’t have it in him to raise his hand to me. But I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that this day would inevitably come. Of course it would, why wouldn’t it? Everyone else has hurt me, and that has shaped me, leading me to expect it.

Most of the time I wrote that off as my own insecurities. But did the voices see something that I didn’t want to look at? And my god, how am I ever going to shut them up now?

The one last time I took a chance and gave my heart away, it got mangled up and thrown in the dirt. How would I ever be able to do it again? It’s like he’s cut my arm off that was once broken but finally healed. He cut it off, and I can get all the prosthetics in the world, but that arm ain’t never coming back. I might even get good enough at hiding it sometime in the future that the casual observer would never know that I’m missing a body part, but I’ll always know that it’s gone. And I could manage better without an arm than without my heart.

You might think it’s the depression talking, and the newness of the hurt. You might say to give it time; you’ll be OK. But I know I won’t, as sure as I would be able to see that arm lying there on the ground. I’m going to hurt for a long time, and even when the hurting’s done, I won’t be the same.

And he won’t even give me the respect he’d give a horse. He’d treat a horse or put it out of its misery, but he’s just going to stand there and let me bleed. Sooner or later, I’m going to run out of blood, and then I’ll just be empty. I almost wish that would be sooner, just so it stops hurting, but there’s no coming back from empty. As it is, he’s going to have to start CPR pretty soon if he expects me to survive intact.

This whole thing has just exhausted me, mentally, physically, and especially emotionally. I don’t even really want to write about it any more. I just want it to have been a nightmare, and to wake up, but I guess that’s not going to happen, is it?

After a long weekend of telling myself that I could talk to him on Monday and maybe get some enlightenment, I sent the kids off to school. I had the day off, and my plan was to do my one little backflow job and then go see him, since it was rainy so I know he’s not out working.

I called him and we talked for a minute about nothings, and then I made the mistake of asking if I could come over. And he turned me down. I told him that I wanted to be able to talk to him while I had my emotions in check, and he wouldn’t even do that. In fact, he said, “maybe another day,” and hung up the phone without even saying goodbye.

How do I deal with that?

What I did was go do my job numbly, and then spend the day alone in the house, completely numb. The kids had a skate night that their dad wanted to take them to after school, so I didn’t even have them to distract me. No, I was just alone with my thoughts all day long.

And I’m starting to get angry. How could he do this to someone who’s done nothing but love him? I’ve never put string one on our relationship; why is he all of a sudden seeing imaginary ones?

I’m angry with him for making me doubt myself, for making me doubt my judgment, and for giving me this giant scar that will never heal quite right. He couldn’t pick worse things to do to me than to keep me in the dark, dangling hope over my head like some sort of goddamn puppy treat. I hate what he’s done to me, and I hate that I’ve let him have the power to do that. But what is love without giving the other person control over you that way? I hate that he’s made it so I won’t be able to let go again like that.

Is he taking the coward’s way out by making it so uncomfortable for me that I’m the one to pull the plug, and he doesn’t have to think that he’s the asshole? I won’t do it, not yet. I won’t be the one to call an end to what I’d seen as the best thing in my life. I will not give it up for one bump in the road—or else what would that make me? Someone who walks when the going gets tough? I’m not that. He may turn out to be, but I won’t.

I think he may have forgotten, in all his years of working with horses, that he’s dealing with a mule here. I may look a little bit like a horse, but I’m a whole different beast.

He is pissing me off enough that I am considering going over there this weekend and just getting all my stuff, but then that gives him the right to say that I ended it, and I’m still not yet ready to do that. Not yet. He started it; he can end it, and bear the burden of being the bad guy. I will not make the hard decisions for him. Not yet.

I work with someone who used to be a Chief Master Sergeant in the Air Force. We call him “Chief” naturally. Chief’s a deeply religious man who’s seen it all in his lifetime. He does counseling and seminars for his church sometimes. I hadn’t wanted to spread what I’m going through around work, but today I couldn’t take it any more, and tracked Chief down to listen to his advice.

He talked with me for a long time, and gave me a lot of good things to think about. He says that he knows it’s hard, but he also knows what Cowboy’s going through right now, and to just give it time. Apparently this moral crisis is something that more than one man has gone through, especially when they get older, and all I can do is just wait it out. Chief admitted that it might not come out the way I would want it to, and he talked to me a little bit about dealing with things if that turns out to be the case.

But he seemed optimistic, and said that he has no doubt that Cowboy knows all of the good things about me and about our relationship, and that his mind is spinning a mile a minute trying to figure things out.

I guess that’s what I needed to hear, that it’s worth sticking out even though it’s hard. I know the people who are telling me to stop putting up with this horseshit are just saying that because they don’t want to see me getting hurt. But life’s about hurting, and I don’t want to be the kind of person that runs at the first sign of difficulties.

So I’m going to try to pull myself together once more, and just tough it out. I might yet be screwed, but I’m going to take that gamble.

Thank you Chief.

I’ve always been told that I’m a strong woman, and I never had any reason to disbelieve that. Everything that life’s ever dealt me, I’ve just dealt with. I made it through a miserable, abusive marriage. I changed careers late in life. I’ve started a business. I’ve gone through breakups, set backs and depression, and I always thought that I pulled through it all pretty well.

I’m afraid that this is breaking me. It’s changing every perception that I had about myself. It’s taken my life rule of “just go on” and thrown it back in my face. It’s made me doubt every choice I’ve ever made and every emotion I’ve ever felt.

I was so secure that I was loved; how could I have been so wrong? How could my judgment be that bad? What did I do to destroy all the good I had and all the future I was looking forward to?

I just don’t see myself coming out the other side of this in any recognizable shape. No matter what he decides to do, he’s already changed me for the rest of my life.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my room, second-guessing myself to death.

I finally got my email transferred and working on my new computer. Took all morning and brought me to tears. No, that’s NOT something that would normally bring me to tears.

I got a flat-screen monitor with it, like I used to have on my laptop, only bigger. Colors look funny on it, but I think that might be because I got used to the old, washed out one. Come to think of it, everything is a little funny. The keyboard feels different and the mouse wheel is odd. I’ll be able to get used to it, especially with the lightning speed that is the reason I bought it in the first place. But I am going to have to see about getting a high-speed connection. Hell, I can afford it if I’m not going to be commuting every other week. Or eating. Still not into that.

I’m lying to my kids. They wanted to know why I didn’t eat dinner last night, and I told them I was sick. That also explains the hanging out in my room alone, reading a book, as far as they’re concerned. I’m glad I’ve got this computer to work with too. They don’t know that it doesn’t take all weekend to set up, so they’re not even questioning why I’m in here alone. And if I start to cry, I can hide it before they see and I have to explain myself.

I’m not neglecting them; a weekend (that’s stormy anyway) of video games and their favorite foods isn’t going to hurt them any. They don’t need to deal with this. It is not their responsibility to keep Mom from being sad, and I don’t want them to have to try.

This is not the emotional state to be philosophizing in, but I’ve certainly been examining some thoughts I’ve held for a long time right about now.

I’ve always felt that most of life is about the choices you make. You choose to live, work, and play where you do, and you can choose to make that enjoyable or not. You choose the kind of person you want to spend the rest of your life with. You choose how to raise your children.

And I don’t think love is without choice either. I believe that choices lead you to the initial infatuation stage, but real love is very dependent on choice. I could have decided to not be happy with a man who was so damaged and so involved in other things, but every day, I made the decision to love him. It wasn’t some unconscious biological directive; it was a deliberate decision. Sometimes I stopped to think about it and sometimes I didn’t, but the call was always mine.

That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t wrong. I don’t know that I would have chosen to love a man that was capable of pulling the rug out from under me as he seems to be thinking about doing. But I do now choose to not give up on him or our relationship just yet, even knowing what I do.

And one of the most frustrating things about this whole stinking mess is that I have no choice in a lot of it. We’re at a fork in our roads, both of us, but it’s his call which to take. I only get to decide how I deal with it. And I don’t have all the information yet to make that decision.

It’s hard to do, but I guess I’m setting myself up a little mental decision tree. Does he decide that he loves me and wants to come back? I’ll do option A and react a certain way. If he decides that he can’t stand me any longer, then I have option B lined out, even though that’s really too hideous to think about much. It’s him deciding that he needs more time to decide that has me at such a loss.

Oh, I know I could make that choice for him, and take away his option to come back to me, and start to try to pick up my shattered pieces. I’m not ready for that yet. That is not the decision I would choose, but if it’s forced on me, I’ll have to deal with it.

No, what I’m choosing to do is to give this relationship every chance that it would deserve if we were already married. Some people would clearly choose otherwise and must think I’m either nuts or a great big doormat, but that’s the call I’m making.

I may have to rethink some of these decisions if I start going insane, and I’m afraid that I might not recognize that in myself in time to do that.

Writing helps sort it out. Talking would be better, but at least this way, I get my thoughts organized before we talk, and have a chance of saying what I think instead of falling apart in a puddle of tears when it comes time to say what needs to be said.

I still don’t know what to think about this whole thing. I’m still stunned that he could do this do me, shocked beyond belief. How could I ever trust anyone again, after this?

Why did he do this?

He acknowledged that we were living as if married, but I don’t think he would give up on a marriage so easily, so why did he give up on me?

What did I do?

How do I go on?

How do I face the kids tonight? I have no intention of bringing it up in front of them, but they’re bound to notice that Mom looks like the living dead. Maybe if I throw their favorite foods at them and let them play video games all weekend, they won’t notice if I’m sobbing in the other room.

How do I face him today? He wants to meet me for lunch. I’ve been afraid and frantic and hopeful and despondent all at once since he told me that. But I know I’m going to burst into tears the moment I see him, and I don’t want to fall apart in public. I guess I do have just a tiny bit of pride left. I am still showering and still showing up for work, after all.

What do I do when I see him? I’m trapped—I can’t tell him how this is affecting me without it looking like I’m trying to manipulate him into coming back. I desperately want him to come back, but not if he’s just going to resent his reasoning and leave again later.

What do I do? Do I lie, and say I’m doing OK? He’s going to know that I’m not—my god, I’ve lost enough weight in six days to be visibly obvious.

I can’t cancel; not just because I don’t want to. I have nothing to lose at this point, but making it look like I’m walking away is exactly the worst thing that I could do at this point.

I will not let him off the hook by thinking that I’ll be all right and that he didn’t do too much damage to me, because he did. He’s wrecked me like I’ve never been wrecked before, and I’ll be damned if I let him off easy. He’s going to have to face up to not only his own feelings, but mine too.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to feel.

Well thank you Dell.

I was all prepared to get all bent and take my business elsewhere, even if it cost me more money to do so, and one nice lady on the phone has made it all better.

See, I spent a ton of money that I don’t really have on a new computer on Friday. I needed it for the business.

And on Wednesday, I got an emailed ad proclaiming 25 percent off on the very computer that I bought! Yeah! Wonderful! I called the company to negotiate that, and only got Indian-speaking drones who said that since the order was already in the system (although I hadn’t yet received it) they could not honor the offer.

I’ve been waiting for this thing to show up just so I could turn right around and send it back to the company. I was getting mad enough that I probably wouldn’t have ordered the replacement computer from them, even with the discount. I got it today, after chasing down the UPS man at the neighbor’s.

And the drone I got today wouldn’t even talk about honoring anything, but referred me straight to the returns department.

Where I, for once in my unhappy life, got someone who was pleasant and took care of the problem. And spoke English as I do, so I suspect that I was transferred right out of the country. And she said that she would honor the offer and not make me send it back, because it would just make me unhappy with Dell. That’s true, and it would also lose them money on shipping charges.

So I get to keep my computer, and I have something to do to keep me somewhat distracted over the weekend. I’m going to go home and set it up.

So, my first entry written on my new computer. This thing is giving me as many fits as my personal life. Somehow, the transfer software worked just fine on my bookmarks, but not one email or address came through. And, of course, my old computer really did bite the dust as soon as I moved it. I can’t get the mouse to work, even if I use a different one, and I have a bad feeling that I’m going to have to take it apart and see if I dislodged something.

We went to lunch today, and it was alternatively tense and just like being at home at the same time. I could hardly speak to him when I first saw him, but lunch itself was OK. Then when he left, I fell completely apart. At least I got some food in my stomach for once.

He says he doesn’t want to hurt me like this, but that he doesn’t know what he wants. He said he’d call me tonight, but I think he’s on the road to a roping, so I won’t be holding my breath.

I have Monday off, except for a small backflow job, and I’m thinking of asking him to go spend some time with me. Maybe if we hash some things out instead of hiding them, I could deal with this better. I don’t know, but I do know that this being alone shit is pure torment.

Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s thinking and maybe he just doesn’t want to tell me. But I don’t see where talking it out could do much more damage either way. If he doesn’t know what to think, I’ve always thought that talking about it helps, and I’m his usual confidante, although I admit to a major bias in this case. But I might have a different perspective than he’s thought of.

And if he knows what he wants, and just doesn’t want to tell me; well, it’ll hurt, a lot, but damn! So does this not knowing.

And I know he’s given it a lot of thought. I don’t want to talk him into something that he doesn’t want. But I also don’t think that I’ve been crazy for all these years. I think these last few weeks are the odd ones, not the ones when he loved me. I’m not going to hate him for having a moral crisis, but I would like to be included in the thought process since it does involve my life and all.

I don’t know if he’s thinking that love’s an all or nothing thing that one’s subjected to against one’s will. I don’t think that. I think you make a conscious (or unconscious) decision to love someone every day. I wonder if he’s mistaking the fading of the butterflies as a lack of love. I’d be pretty surprised if he’s doing that; he’s been around the block enough times to know that it’s more than that.

I still don’t know. I’m still lost.