This is a continuation of The Devil Comes in Blue….
So it seems I must go on..

A few months after the hospital, he got a message from an old “friend” on Facebook.  No big deal.  She had started a company or partnered with someone to start a company and was making big money from this stupid little thing that is brilliant really but I’m not doing any free advertising.

The summer wore on and we were doing well with our …his…transport company, things couldn’t really have been better.  We were content.  We were together.  He had given me a ring the previous Christmas and one night…we decided it was time.  The next day we went and got a marriage license.  They are good for a year and we decided we would know when the right day was.  We were eloping really.  Just a couple of friends to bear witness and we told the kids – all 10 of them, but we didn’t want to make a big deal out of it except that I had a dress and he was going to rent a tux and then take the weekend at a place we liked to go outside of town to get away every once in a while.

He woke up sick.  Of course I had that brief moment of he doesn’t want to do this but he wasn’t faking and it was only my fears anyway.  He had a temperature of 103,  so sick he couldn’t get out of bed. He tried and his apologies and regrets were painful,  He meant them.  So instead of getting married that day, we spent the day in bed watching movies, napping,  talking of things like we often did.  Of the past, of the future, of rocking chairs and growing old.  We talked of how much better to be on this long trip with someone and how we would be with each other until the end.  Promises, sweet nothings, pillow talk, love.

I used to lay my head on his chest in a spot that was made for me.  The perfect fit against my cheek.  We would lay like that and talk or not and I could feel the warmth of his skin and inhale his scent and hear the strong steady beat of his heart.  My heart.  He would stroke my hair and touch my face, say I love you without a word.

It is troubling I feel the need to go into so much detail.  I don’t want to make it like  – look what he did and then he was such an asshole and did that,…  but the two things I have mentioned are important for understanding… not why because there is no logical good explanation.  If I am to tell you of the sadness the hurt…these two things become important I guess.

I do not remember if it was this day exactly that he told me how his friend had asked him if he would be part of her business.  Offered him an opportunity, I don’t know and I am not sure if remembering changes much anyways.  I just know it was very soon after that I became aware she was not just a passing mention in his life anymore.  I tell you that from this point on, I have much culpability in the events that transpired as far as she was concerned although I have come to terms with it and even if I had acted differently I do not think I would have been able to stop the train wreck barreling around the corner.

She isn’t his type.  Not at all.  Not only in physical appearance, or so I guess i thought.  More pointedly she wasn’t anyone that would have given him reason to pause before his thinking became clouded with the blue haze of his addiction.  He was still functioning as far as work and  only had a few nights that the pills took over.  It was a cold winter last year.  We took two final trips that winter, one to Montana where we got snowed in for a week and the last to Utah.  I just didn’t know it was the last.  Looking back, he had acted, different.  And although we hadn’t really talked about a new date to get married, at all…one night in Utah, we had just stopped for the night and it was bitterly cold.  We were in a small town, one of no other patrons in a small motel and we stood in the room with our coats and hats still on waiting for the heater to start warming up.

He stood looking at me and I will never forget the way he did.  Such longing and… I don’t know what it was but as I opened my mouth to ask, he blurted out “Marry me”…

He had been flying back and forth from where he now lives to home.  At her request and on her dime.  She had money to throw around I guess because sometimes she would call on a Wednesday and ask him to come and buy a ticket for Thursday.  I did all the travel coordinating for our drivers and I would look up the price and be stunned to find the cheapest ticket one way was over $600… and she rarely bought the cheapest ticket and never round trip.  Later I wondered if she secretly hoped that one f those weekends he would just stay.  Because as it turns out, that is what she wanted and she dangled the proverbial carrot in front of him,  money comfort, work that was not back-breaking or required exposure to the cold.  Travel all over the country to trade shows…and did I mention she had money.  And that she was getting divorced?  And that Ms Independence all of a sudden needed a man around to help her…  not any man, my man.

As it turns out they had a history and although she hadn’t seen him since they were teenagers and only dated a short time….he was her soul mate.  How bout that?  I almost threw up when I heard that.  After I stopped laughing.

Was I an idiot to feel this ..woman was no threat to me?  Should I have been more insecure and mistrusting?  I teased him and would say things like “so when does she think you are moving in?”  and he would laugh and say “it will never happen”  and “Oh please you are gonna marry her”  to which I got  “NO THAT will NEVER happen.  I don’t love her.  I love you. ”  Never say never.

He was excited about the opportunity to make some good money, to get in this company early and be a part of it.  If the IRS doesn’t descend on them soon, they are definitely rolling in the dough this year.  She’s a business woman.  She’s also a conniving bitch.

He went to spend New Year’s with her.  Her birthday.. the visits became closer together as the time to start the trade show whirlwind in early March neared.  But when he was here, he didnt;t hide anything from me.  If I wanted to sit there and red her text messages right along with him, he let me.  He wanted me to feel secure.  He knew of my fears.  And I know for a fact there was no hanky panky going on.  Please don’t tell me I am an idiot or that of course he was ….  this is one of the reasons I have not told my story… because I know what the stereotypical response is.  I know what it looks like.  And I also know without a doubt that at this point…it wasn’t what it looked like.

The one thing I did not factor into the equation was the little round blue pills.  They aren’t cheap and we were coming into a pretty slow time for truck transporting.  Which meant times were tight.  Christmas was around the corner and …..  that’s not important.

The grass is always greener they say and they are wrong.  But that is one of those lessons you have to learn for yourself.  Nobody can tell you that when you are weighing the options of, love of your life, bipolar, poor, on one hand and tolerable old friend, rich and normal (haha NOT) on the other.  I don’t know exactly when it happened.  When he decided to take his chances with her.  It was before the… collision of wills that set in motion the chain of events, moved them forward at a faster rate.

He hadn’t figure out that if going with the best two of three  – love of your life trumps all three.  He thought money did.  But he has learned that lesson too.  the hard …really hard way.  In moments of clarity he will be the first to tell you.  But there aren’t many of those anymore because the blue haze helps ease that pain….and guilt.  It also allows him to spin fantastic tales of how I forced him to leave, that I didn’t change, that I don’t care and because they are contrived in a FUBAR state, usually late at night before passing out, in the morning he goes over them as if it were a memory not a passing thought.

In Utah, when he blurted out Marry me…  I was confused.  Marrying him was a given I thought we just had to pick the day.  He asked me again and then said he just wanted a normal life,  to be loved and love me until he died.  He wanted to know that when that day came, I would be the one there with him.  That he wouldn’t have to be alone ever again.  I have gone over this moment so many times.  Taken it out and examined it, looking for the clue I missed and I remember thinking at the time, from the look of hope and the complete lack of any sort of defense, and have confirmed it since then, that what he really meant to say, what he was really asking, was “Save me”

Two weeks later, he was gone. And he knew then he would be.  Everyone knew.  Except me.

And had I not seen it in his eyes the day he told me he was leaving a week early to meet her for the trade shows…  he wasn’t going to tell me until he was gone.  To keep me from doing something stupid.  To ensure my stability.  But really to not have to be standing in front of me and see the devastation he caused.  I found out the day before he left.  The day he left we worked all day doing local moves, he and I together and I only remember one moment of that day.  Of breaking down completely in the car while he was going over how he was leaving the business how the kids and I would be taken care of if I just listened to him…  and thinking the sheer stupidity of  trying to tell me I would be taken care of.

He broke his promise, and the pain and the suddenness was no less than if he and his daughter had walked out the door that morning to go to work and been killed in an accident.  Just. like. that. It only took an instant and I am forever changed, forever damaged.

He packed his belongings in trash bags and threw them in a minivan SHE had rented, he took his daughter, our dog, my heart, my dreams and drove away.

He told me all the way across the country that he made a mistake, that he wanted to come home.  Then promised that he would clean up and get off the pills and come back to me.

In May, they got married.

The downward spiral continues, faster and more desperate than I have ever seen it.  Running from the hurt, hiding from the guilt trying to wish a bad decision away and come home.  He is stuck in Colder weather.

It took him 360 days to leave me.  For the first time since we have known each other we haven’t spoken to each other in almost a week.  Not once.  I could not take it anymore.  I can not watch him kill himself and her help him.  It destroys me.  I told him the last time we talked that if he loved me so much, if he needed me like he said, he would show me.  No more broken promises, no more excuses.  I told him in 5 days it will be a year since he left, show me something before then…make an effort.  Make the words something other than empty rhetoric.  Prove it.

He left a comment on my blog – on Friday’s mental moment.  I have no idea if that was his attempt.  It wiped me out.  Completely sent me over the edge for a while.   I was back a year ago, so wounded, so lonely.  So wanting him, but this time, I know I can’t reach him and I am grasping at air.

Yes I know he never meant to hurt me…never wanted to, but that doesn’t change the fact that he did.  It doesn’t make it hurt any less.  It doesn’t excuse him and the mixed message in that comment spoke volumes of the state of the blue haze.

I still have dreams that are so real, I come out of my sleep expecting he will be here.  I have learned to brace myself before full consciousness hits, but for a long time, I would wake up and look at the spot where he should be in confusion and then remember and the tears would flow freely.  Did you know that you can’t ever run out of tears?  It’s true.  I have tested it.

I have learned to enjoy solitude.  Solitude and loneliness are different.  The loneliness hits at odd times..and not so odd times.  Late at night, in the morning, in a moment that I realize there is no one else I would rather talk to about what I am thinking right then.,  But it is better than the constant empty aching of those first days.  The worst part is not knowing when it will sneak up on me.  And if I am in a vulnerable spot… trying to hang on until I am on solid ground.  Sometimes I can’t.  Today …not there either.  Maybe tomorrow will be better.

My love, as I used to tell him goes on and on, and I hope he finds peace. More than anything else, I hope he finds that.   I have my moments of wanting to let the fury that is like hell has never seen loose, but I don’t know where to aim it.  I don’t know who to blame.

Except the Devil in blue.

Lizzie Cracked (thought I was broken for a minute  -but not.. now or ever. )

 

She’d trade Colorado if he’d take he with him
CLoses the door before the winter lets the cold in
She wonders if her love is strong enough to make him stay
She’s answered by the tail lights shining though the window pane. 

He said I wanna see you again, but I’m stuck in colder weather
Maybe tomorrow will be better, Can I call you then?

She said you’re a ramblin man and you ain’t ever gonna change
You got a gypsy soul to blame, you were born for leavin…

It;s a winding road when you’re in the lost and found
You’re a love I;m a runner and we go round and round
And I love you but I’ll leave you
I don’t want you but I need you
You know it’s you that calls me back here babe…

Oh I wanna see you again but I;m stuck in colder weather
Maybe tomorrow will be better Can I call you then

Cause I’m a ramblin man
I ain;t ever gonna change
I gotta a gypsy soul to blame and I was born for leavin…

When I close my eyes I see you, no matter where I am
I can smell your perfume through the whispering pines
I’m with your ghost again….
It’s a shame about the weather but I know soon we’ll be together
and I can’t wait til then
I can’t wait til then…