Time Changes Everything

Do you know those days when you wake up and there is nothing left, and you are so completely consumed with emptiness that you could drown in your own tears, and there is nothing that could save you? You know, those days where if you don’t change something, and I mean something big, you will suffocate and that will be the end of it. The literal goddamn end of you. I can’t tell you how many of these mornings I had before I finally made the change I needed to make. I can’t even tell you what made me finally do it. What I can tell you is that on the other side of that change things are falling into place. Even though things are tough right now, I’m no longer drowning, I’m not suffocating. The total and complete emptiness that I felt is subsiding.

The hardest thing I have ever faced was going through the end of a relationship prior to ending it. Those gut wrenching emotions of a heartbreak are meant to be felt in private not sitting on the same couch as your spouse. What I recall most vividly is the complete sense of aloneness that I had began feeling shortly after my diagnosis. It echoed louder and louder as the end drew closer. I was so angry by the end of the marriage that all it took was that one last argument and just like that it was over, I had to end it. In the heat of the moment while on a trip to be with family, I chose not to return home in the capacity of the loving wife. The next time I entered our home was to begin the process of moving my belongings to where I was staying. I also packed my cat and her things into my friend’s car and brought her back to my hometown that night.

I stayed a few nights with friends but ultimately I ended up staying with my folks. It is an adjustment and I finally understand the say ‘you can’t ever go back home’. You can return to family, you can return to the location you grew up in, even the house you grew up in, but time’s cruel trick is that it changes everything it touches, the people, the relationships, even the emotions. You can go back, but it will never be what it once was.

I know I made the right decision for both of us, not just myself. Someday, I hope he sees that as well. In the end I couldn’t come home again, time changed everything, both of us, the emotions, the relationship, and there was no way to  go back.