One Door Closes. . .

I spent the last six months in my failure-of-a-marriage, tying up loose ends. Divesting myself of all that I'd gained in twenty years. We all accumulate things, to keep under the banner of, “what-if ?”

We'd had all our hurtful arguments. Each trying to score points off each other like a weird new X-box game. Except as far as I was concerned this was no game I ever wanted to play again. I was played out.

I won't bore you with all the usual whirlwind romance and eventual war-stories that gets us to this jumping-off point. Except to say it was interesting, I'll give you that. Interesting. But now, on reflection I've come to realise that I'm the one that made it so. I'm the one that put a smile on my ever-patient face in the hope we'd get through a day without any kind of drama unfolding. It hardly ever happened though. It takes two to tango, and she didn't dance. She liked to dance with others, just not with me. I found all this out later, of course. Why is it, the Husband's always the last to know?

The kids were my main priority, they still are. But 'she,' uses them as a-weapon-of-my-destruction, after she promised faithfully she wouldn't. She used all kinds of ways to encourage me to leave-she wanted the house and all the belongings you see.
I, on the other hand had already inwardly given up on the house, because for me to re-coup any monies, I'd have to sell it and take away the home of the kids, the only home they'd ever known. That would have definitely made me a 'bad-daddy,' in their eyes. So, not an option. I tried my best to keep it all civil, but I think she bad-mouths me to them. I see it in their accusatory eyes whenever they visit. The way they look at me as if I was some kind of monster. I see them thinking to themselves, You hurt my Mother, why did you do that? I'm just a flawed daddy. I hope one day they come to realise this, in case I'm not around to tell them myself.

It just goes to show doesn't it? Women can't be trusted.
Wait a minute. . . ,

Now wait just a minute. . . !
That's not fair now.
Soon-to-be-ex-wives aren't to be trusted. Ever. There. that's much better.

So. Where does that leave me, as I stand here waiting for the taxi to take me to the station to start my new life? Through no fault of mine, I've been evicted from my life. Hi-jacked. Cast Out. Stranded. Marooned. Everything from this point on, is going to be new. . . . Everything on my own terms . . . But wait a minute. . . , just wait a minute. Let's think this through more rationally. . . . I don't really want this. . . I don't want this. . . I want my old life. This new me, isn't really me. I don't belong out here in the cold.

I wonder if it's too late? Maybe we can- . . . ?

I see her head whip back behind the chintz, I know she's looking. . .
maybe if I . . . ?

NO. I have to be strong!

Yes, it's new.

Yes, it's strange, but aren't all new ventures?

Ok, the taxi's here, my suit-cases are stashed in the boot. I'm finally ready. . .
I turn to the house for one last look as an owner. I was the first in our family to own their house. Pity I didn't own it for long. But it's given me ideas for the next one. I look up and see the bedroom window that needs a new . . . , . . . who cares what it needs? It's not my problem now, is it? Look down at the smudge of a front garden where Kath made a flower-pot-size Snowman and called it 'Peg.'

Peg lasted three months. Getting smaller and smaller as it got warmer as we neared Spring. There on the path were the faint outlines of the drawings and poems written by the girls as they played so happily. This upheval is going to change me. I wonder if it'll change them? Oh God! Please don't let them hate me.
Please, please please!
One last look-over, a look up and down the street that for a good while I called 'home,' then turn and get into the waiting car and drive off with my head buried in my hands.