Even though I knew this day was coming, it was still nerve wracking as I pulled down the gate on the moving truck. While Josh and I once had a love that was hot and sultry, I know now that when a relationship started with fireworks, there wasn't a strong foundation to hold things together when the fireworks faded into the night. If I was being honest with myself, the fate of our marriage was sealed before we had been married a year. Fear of facing my family and letting them know their apprehensions about my choice of husband kept me in that marriage for almost a decade.
Josh knew it too. Unfortunately, while I was hanging onto the frayed edges of our marriage for dear life, he was holding onto Erica, his curvy co-worker. For over three years, I remained oblivious to the fact that there was an empty hotel room at every conference they were sent to because they used those moments in strange cities to forget their spouses back home. It wasn't until Erica became a bit too comfortable and answered the phone in Josh's room that everything became crystal clear to me.
As I sat on the couch, my overloaded brain trying to decide which emotion was going to boil to the surface, I knew it was over. The pieces of the puzzle started to fit and I knew that Josh had given up long before that moment. Surprisingly, it was calm that overcame my body. While I was hurt and shocked that he was with another woman, I was strangely okay with it. Knowing that he had left me emotionally and physically, I felt freedom for the first time since he had moved us 500 miles from our hometown.
By the time Josh got home from Atlanta, all of the arrangements had been made. I had called my brother and asked him to find me an apartment. While he was my little brother, Adam had always been my protector. He had never liked Josh and once told me that I should listen to him because his instincts were as honed in as those of Timber, our family dog. I laughed, telling him he was wrong, that Josh was a good man, just hard to understand. And now, I had to eat my words and tell my baby brother that he had been right and I had been wrong.
Adam was kind enough to not pry, he simply asked me what I needed and when and told me he'd find something. Two days later, he called to tell me about a quaint apartment in a renovated Victorian home on the outskirts of town. He knew I would want to shut out the outside world when I got back to town and figured this was the best place to do so, the quiet cul -de-sac butted up against nothing but corn fields and the only people who would be on the street were those who had a reason to be there.
That night, I told Josh I was going home. My declaration was met by indifference. "I am sorry, Julie," he whispered, not able to look me in the eye, "I shouldn't have done what I did. I should have left a long time ago."
"How long?" I asked, not wanting the answer but needing to know how long he'd been seeing her.
"Julie, stop. There's no point."
"Yes, there is. You owe me that much." Sitting at the kitchen table, it felt more like I was watching a show on television than being a part of this peaceful dissolution of a decade of marriage. "I wouldn't have kept trying if I knew it was pointless." I lied. Until this moment, walking away was something I was never able to do, no matter what hell I had been through.
He looked as if he had just been slapped. "Too long. I'm sorry."
And with that, he walked out of the room and I was alone. It was then that everything hit me. I broke down, sobbing into my cup of tea, realizing that the happily ever after I had dreamed of wasn't meant to be. I knew it was coming, and yet I felt ripped apart inside, lost and alone.
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