Ouch ouch ouch ouch.

So the wife moved all of her things out onto a truck on the 15th.  Here's the significance of this date for me:

8/15/92: First wife's 23d Birthday.

8/15/92: Married 1st wife.

8/15/99: Divorce papers finalized after two year battle. Purely coincidental.

8/15/07: Second wife moves her stuff out to Texas. 

The entire month of August is shit.  My second wife has always needed to hide in a bunker for this month.  She was married for the first time during August and her mother passed away two weeks later.  We've both been leery of the month for a long time.

This year, she's moved her stuff to Texas and her father, who is a 93 year-old Alzheimer's patient, is critically ill and in the hospital.  It won't be long.  He and I never quite saw eye to eye, but I didn't tolerate his horseshit.  He was a bit persnickety and a serious poonhound (to his demise, at times) but he was always very kind to my son.  The boy was the only grandchild the guy had.  Now the old man's laying in a critical care unit after battling severe dehydration from neglect.  Once he got re-hydrated, his body couldn't remember how to swallow and he had been aspirating food into his lungs.  Now he's got full blown pneumonia and a feeding tube.  The wife has made it back to Texas, so she was relieved to visit him.  I believe that if he had passed while she were here, it would be just another thing she would lord over me.  It probably would not have been overt or out loud, but she would have held a massive grudge.  Like she does for her first husband.  He didn't allow her to go and care for her mother, and left her alone the Christmases before and after her mom had passed.  I've heard about it for years.

When she visited, we had one rough day.  I snapped at her when kinder words should have been used.  When I got back from Chicago, we re-connected in a way that we haven't in years.  I remembered why I loved her.  We talked and laughed and made friends again.  She even laid on the couch with me, I could smell her hair and feel her heartbeat.  I was feeling hope.  She said that we needed to start over, that she had not moved on and that "only time will tell."  She kept in contact with me constantly until she made it home to Texas, and I felt the tenuous thread begin to fade.  She had told me that she hadn't moved on, that there were opportunities but she hadn't capitalized on them.  I haven't brought home so much as a phone number, for all my talking.  I'm scared it will be the death knell.  I felt icy fear growing in the pit of my stomach with the distance.  I tried not to give into my fear, to not give into the anger that I do so often.  My anger has always been the 600 pound gorilla on my back.  I never dealt with it, just let it out and damn the consequences.  This is what it gets me.  Time to start facing down some of my demons.  I wrote her an email last night when I couldn't sleep, professed my hopes and fears.  For all the hell I have been through in the last months I know that she has been there for longer.  I made her miserable and made her feel that her only chance at sanity was to leave.  I drove her away.

I sat down today to pay the bills, which is never fun to start with.  Gas bill, check.  Rent, check.  Electric, insurance, loan, check check check.  Not fun,  I get to the cellular bill, which was/is a joint account.  I got the hard copy of the bill this time with all the calls.  I haven't been able to pay this one online lately for some reason, stupid webpage crap.

I look at her calls, knowing it is a mistake while doing it.  I'm an insecure and jealous jerk by nature and it only spells trouble.  I guess I was looking for was some sort of hope that she was pining just like me.  What I found was hundreds of minutes of calls and ~1000 text messages to her "high school friend", Jim.  I've heard about the guy for years, about he was a former Jarhead, too; that he was divorced and had kids and his wife did him wrong, etc., blah blah blah. 

I guess what is kicking my ass, is that through all this shit I have talked, I never wanted to be divorced or separated or away from her.  I just wanted to be with her.  I just didn't show her how much, or even that I cared at all.  Now someone else is cannoodling and caring and listening to her stories about what a jerk I am. And I think it's been going on since October, when she met him at the little town parade she didn't invite me or the boy to.  She had pictures of him and his kids on my computer from that day, but completely downplayed it.  Today I'm headed down to the cell store to get this shit off my bill.  I don't mind paying for her service, I have the money.  I DO mind paying for her finding new romance.  I don't want to pay for her new confidante.  I don't want to feel this anymore.  I lost it, I want to hang on to hope now.  Not have it tarnished by my jealousy.  We filed the papers so who am I to ask her about her business? 

Be careful the answers you seek.

Sometimes, it's somethin' to a G.