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.