Dead by Now

I entirely expected you to be dead by now. In order to leave you, I had to accept, good or bad that by today you would be dead. For years you threatened suicide if I ever left you. I was there for two of your attempts and got to stand by and be the near miss widow. To leave I knew I had to accept that it would be OK for you to die. I had to know in my heart you are sick, and if you took your own life, I would be OK.
Here we sit five years later. You are not dead. You pretend to not even be sick.

You take no responsibility for your children. If you were dead that would be OK. It is easier to explain to a child that the hurt and pain you felt were so very great that you could not go on in this world, than this truth that a life of your addiction was worth living for and those who are unwilling to continue to enable you be dammed.

Today there are new people enabling your weaknesses and addictions. They believe your side of the story about being unappreciated and misunderstood. Your vampire ways slow suck the life out of people for years before they are in the place to decide that your threatened suicide, should it ever happen, would be healthier than living with you.
It makes me look like a fool for believing you all those years that you were just moments away from ending it all if I did not sacrifice myself to save you. I was a fool for believing that sacrifice for another person purchased their loyalty.

I was weak. I gave all. I lived afraid of what I would do without you. I had to accept that if you killed yourself, that I might feel like I killed you. By the end there were days I wished you were dead. The subtle underlying threat that if things did not go your way, you would end it, and I would be left in grief controlled me.

Thank god you cheated on me. Thank god I got the escape hatch to get away from you. Thank god you provided to everyone important in my life a clear glimpse into what a self involved piece of trash you were. Thank god you left behind transcripts of chats where you complained that I was too fat for you. Thank god you showed me in black and white that your only loyalty was to yourself and what got you off at that moment.

I still wish you were dead.

Forgiveness would be easier to give if you were dead. I could be convinced it was an illness versus evil that was inflicted on me. I could say it was illness took the father away from my two children. Asshole is just a trait that can’t be forgiven.

I wish you were dead because it would confirm once and for all that those years you held me hostage were valid, instead of that those years I was too naive and trusting to look deeper for the truth about you.

I can’t forgive you, because I can’t forgive me for being weak enough to take your manipulation all of those years. I can’t forgive myself for all the chances I gave you, after all the times you hurt me, for what was best for the children. I can’t forgive you for not ending it all as you promised and I lived for so long with baited breath afraid that the next call would be that you had done it.

I accepted that you would be dead when you threatened to end it because I could not come back. Each year that goes by is a little jab to my heart when I see you still alive and seeking pity from others that your wife left with your children and you have not seen them in years.

It is all about you. It was all about using me up for every drop you could get right up until the end.

I will never be that weak again.