It's been so long since I've written that I hardly know where to start. I last wrote that I split up with my husband. Since then I have sold my home, quit my job, and moved to another state. Home. I moved home. I am back in the safe arms of my friends and most of my family. I left behind a fantastic job with the best co-workers a girl could want, one of the very best of the best girlfriends, a little girl I raised and considered my own - my stepdaughter, and one very bitter and delusional man. The past few months were the hardest of my life. They were, thankfully, filled with as much certainty as they were confusion. I am certain that I made the right decision. My heart and very soul feel lighter. I was always told by others that they loved the fact that I always had a smile ready to go into action. This compliment always left me feeling empty and dumbfounded. I never felt like a smiley kind of person. So who were they seeing when they looked at me? Definitely not the person that I was. I perfected the fake smile and carried it for years. How fucking very sad is that? Now, people, when you see me smile, the shit is genuine.
About a month before I left, he asked me when the moment was that I crossed over the line, when I hit my point of no return. I was unable to answer that question without giving the vaguest of vaguey vague answers. (Don�t crucify me � I know that vaguey is not a word.) I think that my reply went something like�
�The end of last summer. I think. It�s hard to say for sure. Can you really pinpoint the exact moment? I think it just happens over time.�
Yes. It was lame. He was looking for honesty. I was unable to give it. How do you tell someone that it was over before it ever really began? That you spent eight years just going through the motions and being Fake Happy? Not that I was miserable the entire time. That would be untrue and unfair to claim that. But I can easily recall innumerable moments over the years that I knew, just knew that we were not right together. And just as quickly I would dust my negativity away and put the Fake Happy right back into its proper place.
The very first moment would have been our first Christmas together. I was attempting to make sugar cookies, attempting being the appropriate word because I am not much of a domestic goddess. Anything associated with the words �from scratch� or �green thumb� or �sparkly clean� do not fall into my areas of expertise. I�m making an attempt to be domestic and Christmas-y because everyone knows the first Christmas together is supposed to be special and I desperately wanted to create that feeling. While I�m covered in flour and staring at the foreign object in my hand (rolling pin), he is attempting to put up the fake Christmas tree; attempting being the appropriate word in his case because he�s not so much enjoying the experience or caring about creating a �special� feeling. There is much silence, something I would eventually get used to, but not just yet. Loads of silence. Way too much damn silence. And no eye contact or smiles. The atmosphere held nothing but desperation and all of it mine. Confusion. So much confusion. Just months earlier we were struggling to get enough of each other. Just months earlier he had been looking at me with adoration and full of smiles. I wanted that man back. I didn�t know where he had gone or why he left but I damn sure wanted him back. And then my lack of domesticity allowed me a moment of hope. I was standing there mixing the batter and, instead of a nice creamy mixture, I ended up with every teaspoon of it stuck to the mixer. I started laughing and called out to him to come see the mess I had made of yet another experiment in the �from scratch� department. He responded with loud cursing and slamming a fake Christmas tree segment into the wall. My botched desperate attempt at �special� just wasn�t so funny anymore. Our first Christmas. Our first apartment. He eventually patched the hole in the wall. But I never got the man he was before that first Christmas back. Just glimpses, very short-lived moments, shimmers of hope. But I summoned the Fake Happy and that allowed me to hold onto hope for a while.
I tried to leave him a couple months after we married. Yes, so soon. Our first apartment in my home state. Maybe our problem wasn�t so much us as it was first residences? Heh. We were arguing yet again, about what I don�t remember. But I do remember thinking this is it, I can�t take another day of this. He clearly sensed that I wasn�t just leaving to blow off steam and pinned me to the bed. He didn�t hit me but he did scare the shit out of me. I had never seen such rage and desperation on someone�s face before. He swore he would do whatever it took to make things right and looked just as scared as I felt. I was a wimp and believed him. And he did attempt his very best for a long time. He started going to counseling where he was put on anti-depressants. Again. He switched jobs so that we would have more time to spend together. The anti-depressants kicked in and he became more like the man I first met. Not as much as I longed for but just enough. And we held on strong for a while. Just long enough for me to forget how wrong we were together. Slowly, little by little, things started sliding backwards. But I summoned the Fake Happy and that allowed me to hold onto hope for a little while.
A little while turned into almost six years. He made it almost six years before attacking and scaring the shit out of me again. Except this time...this time I had nothing to summon. I had not a single drop of desire to summon Fake Anything. The thing about the Fake Happy? It doesn�t appreciate being used so copiously. The shit should be sold on street corners because it is just that good. It convinces you that all is well. It allows you to walk through your days oblivious. It masks pain, frustration, loneliness, anger. Man oh man did I abuse the fuck out of the Fake Happy. I drained it. And it�s not that I tried to summon the Fake Happy one more time and the shit didn�t come. I lost the will and energy. I just couldn�t do it anymore. Because you just can�t carry on in denial forever and the guilt you carry for fooling yourself is so much more painful than a bad marriage. I�ve kicked the Fake Happy habit. I will never go there again.
Never. Again.
Now when I smile, the shit is genuine. When I laugh, I can feel it from deep within myself pouring out. My life, my emotions, my thoughts - they are all completely foreign to me right now and I am welcoming it with every ounce of who I am. If this isn't happiness that I am experiencing, then I cannot imagine how glorious that will be when it arrives.