This is my first submission to Literotica. As a matter of fact, it's the first story I've ever written. I've thought about it, but never had the nerve to try. I realize there are no sex scenes included in it, but I'm trying to work into those slowly. Maybe there will be some in later submissions. -W. Anderson Hatfield. (By the way, that's a pseudonym. My boyhood nickname was 'Devil' and I adopted the real name of the original 'Devil Anse' as a pen name. Look up the Hatfield-McCoy feud if you want to know anything about my source of inspiration.)
Do you know what the opposite emotion to love is? Most people think that love's opposite is hate, but it isn't. It's indifference. With most people, love gone bad turns to hate, and if you're lucky eventually to indifference.
I'm not most people. My love turned to indifference in an instant, just the length of time it takes to utter the words that no married person wants to hear from their spouse. "Honey, we need to talk."
It's almost a cliché, it's so overused. What's worse, is that it's in no way truthful. Not absolutely truthful, not in total. 'We' don't really need to talk, but she wants to say something and I'm supposed to want to listen. Take my soon-to-be-ex-wife and our 'talk'. The first word in that sentence started it off in the wrong direction. I was no longer her 'honey', a fact that was apparent. Secondly, 'we' weren't talking, she was. Actually, she was reciting from a prepared script that she had rehearsed in preparation for the event. The 'need' part was also totally one-sided. I didn't need it. I would have vastly preferred that the situation wouldn't have developed, and if it had, I would have preferred her leaving a short note saying 'Am leaving. Will file papers soon.' and her wedding and engagement rings. If she wanted to be polite about it she could add the word, 'sorry', but I didn't feel it was necessary.
That's just me, though. Most people react emotionally to things, but that's not my style. I could have been angry, hurt, bewildered, anguished, or just unhappy. I've seen people get emotionally upset when they have a flat tire, and I think it's silly. If the tire's flat, no amount of emotion changes that fact. If the wife's leaving, once again, nothing emotional has any affect on that situation.
I suppose I should explain. I've felt bereavement and loss before, and I learned to handle it. My mother died when I was six, complications with the pregnancy that might have resulted in a younger brother. It was like I had lost both my parents, because my father didn't handle it well. He worked longer hours and occupied his other hours with his other new hobby, drinking. Well, not exactly a hobby, it was more like self-medication in an attempt to cope with something he really wanted to avoid. I was ten when his two major pastimes coincided. One night he drove home after a 'few beers' after work. Boom, I had an entirely new family dynamic.
As an orphan, I was taken in by the only family I had left, my grandparents. I was thirteen when my grandfather died, and sixteen when my grandmother died. Not accidental deaths, just the result of old age. I think that's how I learned to handle the loss of someone from my life. It didn't do any good to rage at my loss or lament the fact that I missed them. They didn't leave me or abandon me, they just died. Nothing intentional about it, shit just happens. I'd heard the saying, 'Life is an incurable disease' often enough. Everyone that is born will die, sooner or later. So, why let it twist your insides and make your life miserable?
I decided at sixteen to take as my approach to life that I had to accept that everything ended. Sometimes you were there at the end and sometimes you weren't, but there was nothing you could do about it. You just took the hand you were dealt and made the best of it that you could.
I polished the skills required to do that in foster-care. I only had to put up with it for a short while, unlike some of the other foster-kids. One guy I met had been 'in the system' almost his whole life. He had been approximately a week old when he was found at a bus-stop accompanied by a one-word note that just read, 'Sorry'. That's rough. My situation was better than his, any way in which you want to measure it. I was new to foster-care, only had two more years of high school to finish and I wasn't in bad shape financially.
My dad may have drunk to forget his pain but he was what they called a 'functioning' alcoholic. I had the money that my mother left me when she died. It was in a trust that I couldn't touch until I 'attained my majority', which I thought meant eighteen. I had the proceeds of my father's life insurance policy and the house where we had lived. The mortgage had one of those 'pay the balance on death' insurance policies, so I didn't have any debt. I wasn't really a 'welfare' case like most of the other kids, but I still needed to have a 'responsible adult' care for me.
That situation persisted for only six months. The attorney that was handling my father's estate decided that there was no reason for me to stay in foster-care. I had a part-time job, I would own my own home when probate cleared, and there was no reason I couldn't be 'emancipated'. That's when a judge looks at your situation and decides that you have the ability, and assets enough, to take care of yourself. I became a homeowner one week before my seventeenth birthday, and a legal adult two weeks after that. Since I had money, I did have to repay the amount that child-welfare had expended on my upkeep, but that wasn't all that much.
You can see, from my account of my childhood, why my outlook on life was a bit different what most people developed. 'Shit happens', you deal with it and move on with the rest of your life. Years later, I got a chance to put that outlook to some use to shape how I dealt with my soon-to-be ex-wife. She died (Well, she was dead to me from that point on, and that was close enough.) and I had to deal with it. It was complicated by the fact that only the part of it that was the woman I married died and there was another person inhabiting her body, but it could be handled. It was like that old movie,
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
. My wife was dead and what was left was a pod-person that looked and sounded like her. So, I started preparing for what I knew was to come.
One evening she started talking and I realized our 'confrontation' was about to happen. Shit, it took her long enough to get around to it. I ignored most of the bullshit, but the last part happened as follows:
"Cindy, can I interrupt you for a minute?" She looked a little shocked, but she stopped with her recitation.
"What?" OK, not the most well-thought-out response, but it would do well enough.
