It's late, but it almost always is. I don't think I'm a vampire, but sleep eludes me. It used to be my one luxury, I could stay up until any o'clock if I could sleep until 9. Not no more. After the latest almost year-long bout with insomnia, it seems that I don't have to sleep as much. Maybe I just got used to running on empty. I'm vigilant for signs of depression, I'm constantly on guard against the anger, I try to remember to eat right, I try not to carry things around in my head, but let them out, let them breathe, let them air---oh, that's what I'm doing wrong.
I thought I was safe. I fled, not once but twice, but I felt safe back here. I vowed to my husband I'd never leave him again. And then every fight for a while, he told me to leave. He begged me to leave. He was afraid that I would leave. I guess once he got the concept down, once he understood that there were some things I wouldn't stand for, now he knows I would leave. But now I won't, despite the knowledge now that there are some things that are simply not available here.
I don't know what it was about him that I fell so hard for. Looking back, it seems like the man I fell for could not possibly be this man, he doesn't even really look the same. And his gentle humor, and his consideration of me, and his clear intelligence have been burned away by all the strife and stress and poverty, it's a wonder how money can change a man. or lack thereof. It was pain that changed my first husband, chronic, unaddressed, unmedicated pain that turned him into a careless drunk, left me alone and the kids at risk because of his inattention. this one changed like that too, drink and drugs and the society of post-teenagers, the abdicating of his parental role. he sat in the room or outside with all these kids, friends of our kids, and they drank and, and----well, then he lost his job over a drug test. and I feel like I tried to drag him back to me, kicking and screaming, tried to loose their grasp on him. he is so easily led. astray, anyway. I'm banking my future on that my man is still in there somewhere, that when the chaos and kids are gone, the money too tight for beer or pot, he will still be in there somewhere. and that I can find him.
It will never be the same. We got off on the wrong foot after all, having our first bad sex on our wedding night. we never managed to live alone after the first 5 months. my youngest son felt that I had abandoned him, and in retrospect, he was correct. but somebody loved me. I mattered to him. He wanted me. just for me. and it had been too long since someone had looked at me like that, I just fell. Hard, on my ass. and all the signs were there, no diamond, no wedding, the loss of all my worldly goods in the storage unit fiasco, his abuse of cars, how incredibly weird he gets when he doesn't eat, all of the warnings that this was not the stable relationship I needed.
Ahh, what good does this do now? do I feel any better? not yet. will I continue to complain? probably. will I stay? I think so. I have to keep at least one promise I made.
