Epiphany

At 3 am on my fourth day of sleepless nights
I decided
I had to find a way to purge my soul
Release the pain I’d claimed some two years before

She said to me, ‘It’s unfortunate but there’s a third party involved.’
In that moment
Life I’d known disintegrated
Nothing I loved would ever be the same

Lonely nights followed
full of resounding silence and uncountable tears
My heart wrenched in ways words could never suffice to explain

I watched her
Nightly
Go to another woman’s bed and
Daily
Return

No longer lying to me
But now to herself
And
Our Children
Nearly always back at 6 AM donning sleeping clothes as though she’d never left.

I rarely challenged but lived in hope
Eventually she would come home
Remembering
The vows we’d exchanged

It didn’t happen

The house we’d bought together
Transformed
A cage I wandered helplessly in
For days of sleepless nights
And wondered why

A million times I thought
I would trade places with Her to be the one she loved again
All the while She wanted to be me

Why?
She possessed what had been most dear to me
Both of us in captured orbit around the planet
That only one could claim

The Beast (as I came to call Her) became the new gravity maker
I became inconsequential
Cook maid babysitter
A wife to one who wasn’t a wife anymore

Fast forward in slow motion through months of sometimes fighting
And
Always hoping
Admittedly
I searched for love in other places
Found comfort in familiar and unfamiliar arms

And yet

I reached back

Here and there now and then

To see if courses could be changed
Broken things mended
The response
Always the same
‘I’ll think about it.’
No other words ever came

The night I poured my heart out about the emptiness she’d left me with
She told me,
‘Fill that space up with your children.’

I raised my hands to her in rage
She expected me to do what she had not
I understood then there was nothing left to do but leave
That line
Once crossed
Is easier to cross again

I understood that anger snaked its’ roots in me and would not be stifled

Days of sleepless nights later
A life of headaches, itching, ulcer, fear and worry
I could not see myself
I had left
But
Taken her
And
Left me behind

Sleep starved epiphany at 3 AM
I purge my soul
Find my voice
Tell my story
Free my heart
Hoping to find me again