In a blink of the eye

It’s been a battle with my grief, depression, and loss about my failed marriage(s) and families. To those of you who have followed my rants since the beginning and the newer people, I was first married way back in 1989 right out of high school. I was raised in the church, Lutheran, and when I got my girlfriend pregnant, I thought I was doing the right moral thing by marrying her. It was the best 5 months, until it wasn’t. We had a beautiful daughter, Kayla, and I was everything I thought I should be. A version of the man who raised me, but that wasn’t enough to keep my ex happy. Boy, she did a number on my confidence and my self worth. I was young though and the “bounce back” wasn’t too hard. I was still in shape, had a full head of hair (finally found the best haircut) and the support I had was awesome.

Ten years later I met Patty, my 2nd wife. OMG, she was short, curves in all the right places, exotic beauty (she is half Thai), dark hair, and brown eyes that melted my soul. I was smitten from day one. There was a slight age difference, she was 10 years younger, 18, but because of how she was raised well mature than most her age. We flourished and even with the tons of outside objections and difficulties that her friends would cause, we had no problems what so ever. We eventually bought a house and the kids started “popping” up. We married in 2006, having been together 7 years. It wasn’t a big thing. Justice of the peace, a couple people, no pictures, no honeymoon just a very nice dinner at Hideaway Bay restaurant, but that was us. There wasn’t money for rings, but we didn’t need them. There years went on, essentially problem free, other than the typical marriage with kids stuff. Getting slightly behind on bills, losing a job or two due to unforeseen circumstances, and having to let a car be repo’d. It was that or let our kids starve and be homeless. We took it all in stride. In 2015, my mother was slowly falling into dementia and asked us to move in with her, she would gift the house I grew up in. This would also be a great time for our children to really get to know her before to late. Still no problems. We never fought, we approached our relationship as two separate people making one life and not two people trying to be one person. She didn’t need to be up my ass about my friends and I wasn’t up hers.

Maybe I should have been.

She had worked at a local hardware store since we moved into our first house in 2001, for a majority of that time she worked with the same several people, until 2018 when they remodeled and hired new people. I don’t know if all the years of the flirting had finally caught up to her or all the years of men’s rotten habits of “sweet nothings” and “promises” that they would give her a so much better life than I did had finally took her love of me away. I’m sure there are several hundred things that could have happened.. She was so young when we got together, she never really had any other relationships, love fades, yada yada. I have had 3 very lonely years to think of each and every one so if you comment, please keep your theories to yourself. 2018, her new husband, was hired towards the end of October. She ended our marriage in January 2019. Less than 3 moths, she gave up a 20 year relationship that included 4 children, a family that from day one took her in as their daughter and sister, for a man 20years older than her, who had a few extra bucks, a shit past, and God knows what. He was brought into “our” life, our home, my childhood home, and my kids lives, hours after I grudgingly agreed to “give her space” with the promises of counselling and  answers. I guess I got some of those “answers”, but nothing else. I was told that they were engaged in March 2019 and the divorce was started in August, our anniversary month. She broke every promise she had ever made to me about the separation and she did everything that I had told her all the other girls did that hurt me over the years before her that she said she could never do to me. She remarried about 2 weeks after the divorce was final. She talks as though she never knew me, even when it comes down to memories of the kids. Four of the greatest few times of my life was being there watching my boys being born and mentioning them brings answers that sound as though we just bought them at Walmart.

So that was a long way for me to get at the title of this entry. For 3 years I have struggled to move past and on, yet in a blink of an eye I am gripped with grief of the loss of her and the “family” life I will probably never know again. Two times I have lost the one thing I always knew I wanted. Yes, I know that I still have children and I know the whole “what makes a family” thing, please also don’t say that in comments. 

The overwhelming loneliness comes out of nowhere and the heavy depression just weighs me down. It just hits from out of nowhere no matter what I have done over the last few years. I have a day where the present and future sun comes out from the clouds, but then in a blink I am pulled back down.