You know that moment when you finally break down from something you’ve been trying to stay strong about for a really long time? That moment when the floodgates can no longer hold all of the emotions that pound behind it and they finally just burst open? I let that gate fall down today when Ryan text me that he is moving back to Texas. We’ve been broken up and moving on for seven months now and I have not cried once. I have not had one of those nights where I have lay in bed and cried myself to sleep, not one single night. I’ve never been overly emotional about us no longer being together, much to Ryan’s disappointment. Leaving Ryan was probably the best decision I have ever made. But when I got that text, it all let loose.
Most of it was guilt. I feel a tremendous amount of guilt for the manor in which I forced Ryan out. Yes, I allowed him to stay until he found a place to lay his head at night, but I sent him packing with next to nothing. I sent him on his way in a fit of bitterness and in the meantime, arranged my home how I had always imagined it would be had I not married Ryan and had I not been forced to live with his terrible sense of decorating. Here I was, having acquired my pie in the sky, content, happy, and free for the first time in three years. I. Was. Me. Meanwhile, Ryan, being the eternal pessimist that he is, struggled and wallowed and rebelled, which is how he spent most of our relationship, so no surprise there. Only, I wasn’t there to dig him out this time. I held a secret hole in my heart for Riley though, one in which I could not let myself succumb to. I made the decision that I should probably let him go, thinking it would be better for him and for me.
Upon coming back to the house several times to grab his things, Ryan literally begged me to give to him some various kitchen supplies including pots and pans, HIS knives, silverware and some of HIS utensils. I remember feeling sorry for the first time for what I had done, remembering in my mind that the trash cans in the house in which I was still using were his from before we got together and he never once asked for those back. They are still in my house to this moment. I think about all the things I take for granted when I am settled into a home: Saran wrap, garbage bags, nice towels, sheets, a bed, forks and knives, toothpaste, Excedrin… and I think about the fact that he had none of those things and had to swallow his pride and ask for a few. I think about how he asked me if I could put some of the things from the medicine cabinet in a bag for him to pick up and I left it outside my front door, not wanting to see him. I think about how I made him get rid of a lot of things that he had on his own because they were worn, ugly, and old or mostly not to my liking, and so when I kicked him out and only allowed him to take what was his, he had little to bring and call his own. I feel bad.
Though he didn’t swallow his pride when he was drunk, belligerent and calling me a cunt at the lightrail station the night I realized I was finally going to end it. He didn’t think about my wants or needs when he was sending naked pictures of himself to another woman. He wasn’t feeling bad when he was making every attempt to get her to meet him to seal the deal and really cheat on me. Nor did he swallow his pride and fess up when I caught him red handed; not until he knew he couldn’t convince me of his lies. He never felt bad when he had me paying all of our bills and was asking to go to Vegas in the same breath he was telling me he couldn’t find a job to save his life.
I guess it really gets to me that I am sad for him. I am so torn because part of me wants to have some compassion for his situation and the fact that he has hit rock bottom. The other half of me thinks it serves him right for being a selfish, uncaring, rude, negative asshole. The worst part is that he will be leaving Riley and no matter how much dislike I have for Ryan and the way he treated me as his wife, there will always be sadness in me for the fact that he will have to be away from the number one person in his life.
So today is a sad day indeed. I miss my little Riley so very much and am second-guessing my decision to quietly step out of his life. It was a tough one and I don’t believe there to be any right answer. I hope we can all find peace somehow. Maybe that can be Paizley’s gift to us.
