Not my life

This is not my life. I had one. A real one. One that I wondered what I had done to be so lucky. I had found him. The one. The one they write about in books and when I found him, he loved me more than I loved him.

And the scary thing is, I think he liked it better that way. When I started to love him more, he ran away. He couldn't take it.

And even scarier, I think I like it better too. I liked being treated like something precious, and like he didn't deserve me.

Doubly ironic, he never did.

He wasn't traditionally good looking. Long greasy hair, chewed up upper lip and swollen gums. Heavy set with giant brown eyes.

Everyone said, you can do better  which I never got because why, if that were true, had I only gotten attention from dorks all through high school? But I digress.

When I talked to him, he challenged me. He challenged me! I didn't realize how much I hadn't been challenged by all the pretty faces I had fallen for. I was too busy looking at them and dreaming about kissing them, to realize they had nothing to say.

But he couldn't be toyed with. He couldn't be dismissed. He was my equal, and at the time, I thought possibly my superior intellectually.

And he was a tortured soul and I gave him some sort of peace. He needed me and I LOVED being needed and wanted.

The more we talked the more attractive he became. It wasn't long before I had fallen. I loved his strong body. Hulking broad shoulders, solid and soft. He was statuesque and beautiful inside and out.

How could I have known there was a cancer attacking his personality, growing stronger every year until it would consume the soul that belonged to mine?

We were so happy. We never had money and it was hard, but it didn't matter. We never wanted much, and we were happy just being together.

And then we were blessed with a boy. The perfect child. Gorgeous, smart, athletic, sensitive, caring, and yes very neurotic but plain is boring. Our little family. I was so proud of us! I thought he was too.

Stress never shattered that happiness I had laying in bed at night, with my little family together. That was comfort of the heavenly kind.

That comfort is gone now. It was destroyed by a woman on the other side of the country. Words like divorce and visitation and support were not supposed to tarnish this life. This is not my life. It's ugly and I just want to scream.

He's gone and the man he is now, he would have found repulsive. I don't want him back. And now that my little bit of heaven has been shattered, I don't know if I'll ever have that comfort again. How can I trust when I trusted before with such certainty?

And yet I hope...Every part of me believes in true love. But now I wonder if I was wrong or if true love isn't as eternal as I believed. Was it not true, or can true love be corrupted by a woman with a big toothed grin and an offer of an escape from yourself?

I'm trying to forgive, to forgive him, and me and us but now that he is leaving the state and taking my son's comfort with him, I don't think I can ever forgive him.

It's disgusting and unbelievable that he could leave our son. So disgusting, in my heart, I can no longer give him credit for being his father. He is my son now.

So this is not my life...now...

my son is my life.