The Other Side of the Door

And this is the companion piece for yesterday's post...

The other side of the door….

Days of loneliness.  I suppose the days aren't nearly as bad as the nights are.  The days I've always spent immersed in work.  There are never enough minutes or seconds or hours to complete everything, to ponder and review the things I need to look at for the future, to plan, to scheme.  The nights are worse. 

It's the time I used to spend with him. 

Nights spent talking about our lives, our plans together.  Spent laughing at television.  Spent cuddling at the couch.  Furtive, coy glances at one another over dinner.  Retelling stories of our twenty year history, years spent together and apart. 

It's the nights I dread the most.  There's this hole in my life that I can't seem to fill.  Now, instead of preparing dinner with him in my kitchen, each doing our own task and with the occasional slap of the dish towel on my rear end, I microwave leftovers or eat cheese and crackers.  I can't remember the last time I actually tasted the food I ate. 

I've spent days trying to make sense of the worst betrayal I've ever felt.  I feel as though I've been torn inside and I can't heal. 

Every moment spent idle has been filled with thoughts and memories of him.  The mussed look of his hair in the morning.  The stubble on his cheeks when he hasn't shaved in a day.  The way he spends what seems like days brushing his teeth.  They way he looks when his glasses slip too far down the bridge of his nose. 

For every good thought or memory, there is its opposite.  There is the sound of his voice coming clean about relapsing.  Coming clean about the sanctuary he sought in the arms of another.  The arms of another when so much time had been spent telling me of how my arms were all he'd ever need, ever want. 

What was real and what was a lie?  How do you come back from that? 

I spent so many years longing for the right time, longing for the day when we could be together.  So many years dreaming of what it would be like, to finally be his woman and he my man.  We'd spent an almost idyllic year and a half since we'd reconnected.  The fairy tale we'd both imagined had seemingly come true.  Not without cost, not without baggage.  But happy nonetheless.

Or so I'd thought.

I wasn't so naïve that I was unaware of his demons, his past…even his present.  I knew the things that haunted his eyes, the fear I could see in those eyes when he thought it was hooded and hidden from me.  I was never ignorant.  I entreated him to open up to me, to confide in me.

To trust me. 

I fought to be where I had been.  In one day, in one conversation, it was all ripped from me. 

How do you look at yourself in the mirror when you have been your most honest, your most giving, your most loving…when you've done everything in your power to make someone feel loved, feel worthy and they spat all your words, your pure emotions back in your face?  How do you heal from a wound that reopens every time you breathe?

He wants to talk to me.  He wants to explain.  How can I find it in myself to listen? 

Everything in life is a risk.  He was a risk.  I knew there were no guarantees.  I signed on for the ride.  I signed the disclaimer, giving my heart to a junkie.  A damaged junkie, at that. 

But this…this was so much worse. 

How do you live with yourself knowing your love, your care wasn't enough?  How do you live knowing you weren't enough for the one you loved with a passion, an intensity, a purity that you'd never experienced before in your life?

How do I go on from this?  How do I recreate my life around this hole? 

There's a knock at my door.  It's beyond late.  No idea who would be coming by at this hour.  I'm in face cream and pajama bottoms and my fluffiest socks.  Anything to try for some comfort and solace.  I mute the television and head to the front door. 

I glance out the peephole, thinking maybe someone has the wrong door. 

They don't.

It's him. 

Why?

I'm frozen in place.  I can't speak, can't move.  I stand there, stupidly.  I've gone "tharn" like the rabbits in Watership Down. 

"I know you're there," I hear him say.  His voice sounds so raw, so desperate, so earnest.  I look again out the peephole.  His face is wan, gray.  The bags underneath his eyes are pronounced.  My heart breaks just a little more as I stare, transfixed.  He looks terrible.  He looks as destroyed as my insides feel. 

The words pour out of him, a slow trickle at first and then he gains his momentum.  He is trying so hard.  So, so hard. 

Part of me…part of me is torn.  Part of me wants to hear his explanation, his reasoning.  His sorrow.  His request for forgiveness.  Here, in short bursts, are the truths I've been looking for.  Here are the words that are the root of the situation.  The hurt, the fear, the all encompassing sorrow he has carried in his heart every day of his life.  He is breaking my heart.  Again. 

My hand flies to my mouth to stifle a sob.  I feel the tears, hot and angry and so sad as they run down my cheeks.  I see him in my head as the little boy he once was, the little boy who lost his innocence too early.  The little boy who no one protected.  The little boy who tried so hard to keep the appearance of normalcy.  The little boy who wanted to be good, to be loved.  To have someone hold him and tell him all was right with the world and he was perfect.  To sing him to sleep.  Inside he is still that little boy. 

He is the definition of failure to thrive.  He's existed.  And existence is not living.  It's a sorry excuse.  It's the wax figure of a real person. 

My chest hitches.  I want to cry.  I want to yell.  I want to hit him.  Repeatedly. 

His words…there is so much in them, so much behind them and not said.  But how can I forgive this?  How do I trust again? 

All of life is a risk, I remind myself. 

All he's ever wanted was someone to believe in him, I argue with myself.

I believed in him and he betrayed me, my head says.

I don't think I can turn my back, my heart says. 

He has a problem.  I know that.  Can I walk away knowing that?  I may never allow him back into my heart the same way, but can I walk away knowing what could happen if I shut him out?  If I become another in the tally line of those who gave up on him?  Who contributed to those feelings of inadequacy, of failure that he carries? 

I can't.  I can't walk away.  I know he loves me.  I know he's flawed.  I know he needs help. 

I can offer the first gesture.  I can try again. 

It is no guarantee of the rest of our lives, no storybook.  But it is a start.  It is faith.  It is knowing the soul I've seen inside his eyes, his heart, beyond the grave errors he has made.  I refuse to give up on that man.  Not yet.

I hear him turning to leave. 

Drawing in one last breath and holding it within my chest, I throw caution to the wind and put my heart on the line and open the door. 

Sometimes, we just have to follow our hearts and pray they don't lead us astray.  I've invested too much to give up yet. 

I stand aside to allow him entry - into my home and back into my heart.