The End of a 15 Year Delusion

He left me two+ years ago. It feels like forever ago and just yesterday at the same time. When I think about our last day together I wish I had stood up for myself. I wish I hadn't let him break me. It's not a happy memory, but it's one that needs to be shared. My hope is someone reads this and gets themselves out before they waste 15 years like I did. I'm starting off by sharing this last memory together because, it'll be healing for me and is a perfect example of a narcissist discard.

I was sitting on the floor in the kitchen next to the door to the garage. It was tucked away and I could hide without truly hiding behind a closed door. I had had way too much to drink, but I was so lonely and trapped in my depression. Only a month ago he’d told me he hadn't been in love with me for our entire 10 year marriage. Only a month ago he told me he wouldn't touch me sexually, because he didn't want to give me the "wrong idea" about our marriage being repaired. He told me that if he slept with me it would just be “to just get off.” When I'm sober I can tuck those harsh words away in the back of my mind and pretend like it didn't happen. He barely looks at me or even talks to me. All he does is play his video games and pretends I don't exist. A part of me was relieved if I'm being honest. I wanted him to leave me be. I didn't want him fucking me, because that's all it was. He got what he wanted while I was left bleeding. It had been that way for years. All I can say is it was easier to be his willing victim than face his isolation.

As I sit on the kitchen floor crying as I question how much of a failure I've become. My own husband won't touch me, won't look at me. How could I have failed this badly when I always put him first? I can't hold the weight of these dark thoughts anymore. I need to feel something other than emotional pain and anguish. I turn to the one thing that made me feel better during my teenage years, I start banging my head against the door. I need to feel something real, something that will mask this soul deep hurt. I only get a few strikes in before he storms into the kitchen. I guess I must have been making more noise than I realized, because he even heard me wearing his noise cancelling headphones. He gives me a look of annoyance, like my suffering is an inconvenience. He doesn't make a move to comfort me. He does ask what's wrong, but I can tell he's saying it to sound like he gives a shit. The me in that moment thinks maybe he'll see me and how much I'm hurting. Maybe he'll see my SOS and actually help me. That wasn't what happened. Instead he becomes cold and distant; like he can't be bothered with this. He tells me he's not going to stay and "condone" this behavior. I rush to dump the rest of the alcohol down the drain to show him I can change. That I can be better. It doesn't work. He shuts the bedroom door with me stuck outside. I spent most of the rest of the night writing him an apology letter. Of course, my letter means nothing. When I come out of the guest room he's looking up short term rentals. He tells me last night just proves how much he can't be near me. And just like that he's gone within 30 minutes to an hour. I ask if this is permanent and that he doesn't want to go to therapy and he can't give me an answer. He just leaves, no good bye, no sense of where things are going. He does make sure before he left that he gives me my Amazon credit card back that he's an authorized user on. It's something so trivial and yet sends a chilling message. He doesn't even say good bye. He was there and gone as if he never existed. He was in such a rush to get out he even closed Taz, my cat, in the closet. I have no idea where he went. Did he stay in Orlando, did he go to see his brother in Tampa? To this day I still don't know where he went when he first left. I didn't have access to his credit card so I couldn't look up the charges to figure out his location. He's too smart to leave me a way to find him.

What's truly sad is that afternoon I cut the grass for the first time in my life. There were cameras all around the house and I wanted the motion sensors to go off and show him I could figure something out on my own. He had a way of always making feel like I wasn't smart enough to survive without him. I foolishly thought he would see this as me trying and want to come home to work things out. After 24 hours of not hearing from him I broke down and called my parents. He had told me earlier never to do that, but I had been so low I needed family. I hadn't been in contact with them for a long time, but him leaving shattered all the strength I had. I didn't think I could survive without him and I had very few places to turn for the level of support I needed.