Day 10

It's four in the morning and I am here writing this, drinking my second cup of coffee, watching the occasional lightning strike reflect in the bedroom window, wondering just how long I have left. See I realized, finally, there is no hope for my marriage. I can not make my wife love me. Worse, I cannot make her forget about things that happened long in the past. Worse still, I don't think I can have another child with her. It's not that I don't want too, but I can't. Every time I think about making love to her, I can only hear her mock me under her breath. I can only hear her say how she could be living a much happier and fulfilling life outside me. I can only hear her pounce on something I will say that is either innocent or insignificant. Like this morning, my daughter has been sick for some time now. She has this deep wet cough at night that keeps her awake, as well as mommy and daddy. I have mentioned several times that she should probably take her to the doctor, but she insist, "It's just a cold that keeps spreading among the playgroup." Fine, but there must be something a doctor can prescribe to help dry the cough. I allow this nonsense to continue for two. She is fine during the day, but at night she has coughing fits that woke me this morning. She was nearly throwing up, coughing so hard. When I took her into our bedroom, and handed her to mommy, because she calms easier with mommy, I said, "She needs to go to the doctor Monday. Enough is enough." I only meant that she has had plenty of time to recover and now its time we let a doctor look at her. My wife, however, jumped straight up my ass at four in the morning, I suspect, because of word choice. 

She said, "Fine. Are you going to take her?" Yes, I said. She then just laughed and patronized the hell out of me for it. Then I realized a key understanding. There is no hope for us, because I now, like my wife, cannot stand her voice. It makes me physically ill. It makes me so down-trodden every time I hear her poke at me, like her father poked at her, that I can no longer bare the sight of her. None of you can understand how much this pains me. I've never worked so hard at something in my life, than I have with my marriage, and the more I drive forward, the harder she becomes. My marriage has taken everything from me that I hold sincere and true. I no longer know what it means to love, versus what it means to coast along, mindless and numb, telling myself that the familiar is better than the unknown. 

So you have arrived then. It took you some time to get here and I commend the hell out of you for sticking with it this long. I would give up everything I have for the power to go inside her head and remove whatever has kept us apart all this time. I want nothing more than for her to smile. I haven't seen her smile at me in so long. Just as I knew it would happen, she know thrives on the love of our daughter. She has forgotten or no longer cares to love me. I am just a device, a means for her to complete her little circle of joy. And I feel like I owe it to her, because I am so convinced of being such a horrible person, even knowing I could not be further from it. The level of her ambivalence is so severe that it MUST be me. It must be the terror of being my wife, the hardships that come with loving someone as awful as I am, that have lead her to this place of desolate solitude. It's like watching a cancer patient slowly die. She put up a good fight in the beginning, but then the condition just deteriorated, day after day, until she just decided to give in and wait for the inevitable. And I honest to god, don't have the foggiest idea why. Why now? Why give in when things are better than they have ever been? Money is good. Not a lot of debt. About to refinance the house and save 100k at 3.25% over 15 years...

I'm losing you again. No, you're not. These are perfectly acceptable things to wonder and question, regardless of how I feel. I do want her to wake up. I would say before it's too late, but that bell has rung long ago. But she could make this all go away, with one simple action. Kiss me. Tell me that you love me and make authentic enough that I do not doubt it. I thought you said it was simple. I'm beginning not to like you.