Day Fifteen — the Rational Version

April 18, 2006

Dear Lunch Buddy,

It’s 6:49 PM, and I’ve just eaten dinner (beef and bell peppers in onion gravy with snow peas over a bed of rice — a Lunch Buddy favorite) and watched a really stupid episode of Star Trek TNG (Data is infiltrated by a dying man whose a total ass — hilarity ensues). A commercial for some M&M’s candy bar came on. It was a pile of M&Ms laying in the back of a car next to a chocolate bar, and the song "Almost Paradise" was playing. It reminded me of the time you and I went out to your truck after game night at Treehouse, and made love all cramped up and cold in the back. That was the first time I ever let myself cry in front of you. It also reminded me of the night we smoked together and I felt all naughty and forbidden. A stupid M&M commercial made me cry uncontrollably.

But that’s not what moved me to write again tonight. I’ve made a promise to myself to leave these entries alone and not edit them, even if I read them later and think I sounded pathetic or stupid. So I can’t delete my last entry, but I feel the need to apologize a little.

I guess the only thing I’m really sorry about is the harshness with which I said some things. The truth is that I truly believe everything I’ve said. You and I should be together. You and she should not be. That’s the truth. I think deep inside you know it. You said it yourself. When you dream that we’re still together, everything feels right. And when you wake and realize that we’re not, it goes back to wrong.

But I also know that making the decision to leave someone you’ve spent so many years with is incredibly difficult. Leaving my husband was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do before or since. We had been together for 10 years. We had a home and a future planned. It’s been 10 years since we split, and it still makes my heart sick to think about it.

But only because it was painful. Despite his suicide — despite my credit situation — I have never once regretted making the decision to leave him. When we split, I was free to become the best person I could be. It was like my lungs could expand all the way where they never could before.

I know you think that my situation with him was extreme, but yours is so much more extreme than mine was. You rationalize things that should not be rationalized. You tolerate selfishness, verbal abuse, and completely irrational logic. What’s worse, you think that because you talked her down from the ledge and she was able to take some blame for her behavior that that makes it acceptable. Lunch Buddy, if someone socks you in the eye and then admits how wrong they were to do it, you still have a black eye. And eventually, after getting socked over and over, you’re going to go blind in that eye. You have been working at this for 10 years and guess what? You were having these challenges long before I came into the picture.

I know that the kids make it more difficult for you, but you cannot let them be a part of your decision. 1) they’re almost grown, 2) you cannot get the fulfillment from children that you get from a loving, caring relationship, 3) they’ve seen the relationship that the two of you have, and smart as they are, THEY would probably have left by now if it was their partner, and 4) if they love you now, they will love you no matter what and if they don’t, there’s nothing you can do at this point to change that. They see how you treat them and how their bio-father treats them. How could they not love you?

You and I have something that most people never find. If there was hope that your marriage could be fulfilling, you would never have let our relationship become what it did and has and will be.

Please talk to your parents like you promised. One thing I’ve learned from talking to my family about you is that keeping secrets from those you love makes you feel detached and incomplete. As long as you keep secrets from those you love, you’ll never feel right about anything.

I love you like depths of the universe,