The Weeend

THE WEEKEND

Chapter Five

I had mentioned to her that she seemed more excited than usual to be going on a trip. She said that I was just imagining it, but she really wanted to get out of our town as she felt a need for a change of scenery.

It was unlike her not to call when she arrived so I had called my wife's cell phone but it just rang and rang and eventually went to voice mail so I left a message saying that I was calling to touch base. She is usually pretty good at calling to let me know how she has arrived safely and how she is doing.

After an hour or so I called again, still no answer. I thought that she might be having trouble with the local cell provider, though this had never happened before, certainly not in the last 10 years or so. I decided to take a deep breath and wait for a few hours.

Just before I went to bed I called again, still no answer. I decided that if I could not get through to her in the morning I would call her work and see if they had heard from her.

I got little if any sleep that night. My mind was racing as to what might have happened to her and how to go about contacting the authorities were she was supposed to go. First I would call the airline and make see if she made the flight or not. Once she was there it was going to be a matter of me calling the various hotel chains. Would they give me any information over the phone? Would I have to contact our local police and see if they could assist? Was she alright, had she been taken ill or kidnapped?

The following morning there was still no answer so I knew that I had to wait a couple of hours before her work place opened. I waited till 9:30, having tried to contact her yet again, and called her work. No one had heard from her. Now I was really beginning to worry.

At midday, again having had no luck in contacting her, I called a friend of mine in the local Police Department and asked for his help. He explained that he would call his contacts and see what he could find out with respect to anything that was on their radar. He promised to call if there was anything to report but in any event he would put them on the lookout if anything with my wife's description arose.

For the rest of the day I would call periodically and at the end of the day I again contacted her place of work. They confirmed that they had tried to contact her but, like me had no success.

I had my second sleepless night. At least she was supposed to return on the late morning flight so everything might be alright after all.

**************

My cell phone rang; as I picked it up I saw that it was my wife calling. I answered and heard her say hello. At that moment both my heart and my brain were working at breath taking speed. My heart so glad to hear her voice; my brain was trying to make sense of all that had happened, or not happened in the last two days, indeed the last two weeks or so; trying to get a grip on what I had been feeling with what was really happening.

It had all started two and half weeks ago when I returned from a weekend with my family and extra day of business away from where I lived. Things were different, is the only way that I can describe it. At first I could not put my figure on it; just a feeling, a sense. As the days passed by, the feeling got worse, rather than better. By the end of the first week, I began to feel a distance between my wife and myself. Everything was so subtle, it was not that she was acting differently, and yet she was. I felt an emptiness that was not good. She made love to me with a passion that I had not felt in years and yet something was not right.

I was worried but did not know why; I just knew that something was not right. She said that she had work on her mind, but I don't recall it ever affecting her in that way. What way, you might ask, and I would be unable to describe it. I had asked, she had given me an answer, and yet it did not feel right. Something was definitely on her mind, but what, I had no idea. It was clear to me that it had to be serious as I had never known her to get up in the middle of the night more than once in a blue moon and now she was doing it three or four times a week for the last couple of weeks.

I realized that there was this distance growing between us and nothing that I said or did was making any difference. I had a feeling of helplessness. It was a hollow empty feeling.

Hello, she said again, bring me back to the present. I answered her with a barrage of questions. I asked her how she was and what had happened to her? I asked why she had not called and said that I had not slept the last night because I was so worried about her. There was so much on my mind. Most importantly, I wanted to hear something that would allay my uneasy feelings, make everything better, oh God, I wanted this horrible uneasy feeling to go away.

Initially there was a pause and then she began to answer me. She said that much had been going on and that we needed to talk. My heart sank. This was not what I wanted to hear. I asked what was going on, what did she mean? She told me that she would explain all when we spoke, in person, as she had a lot to say and we needed to have the discussion in person.

My world became dark and started to crumble in on me. I couldn't think and my mind was swirling. I was breathing hard. I struggled to gather my thoughts. I told her that I would cancel all my meetings; that I wanted to meet as soon as possible. She said that, as she had not been to work all week, she had to go to work first. She said that she knew that we needed to talk as soon as possible, and would try to leave work early so that we would be able to chat in private.

I knew that she was right, and would have to go to work and that I would have to wait, but there was no way that I could concentrate on work. I told my colleagues that I was not feeling well and needed to go home. It was the truth, I was feeling terrible, indeed, I was feeling sick. The telephone call had not helped at all. I was feeling worse now as the phone had confirmed what I had been feeling all along, but as it was supposition, there was always the possibility, the hope, that the feeling was just a false feeling. Now I knew that worse was to come. The question was how much worse was this going to get? I sent a text to my wife to let her know that I gone home for the rest of the day. She replied that she would leave as soon as she could.

When I got home I tried to relax but it was useless. I wanted to know what was going on and as each waiting minute passed my prediction got worse. I put on some music, that didn't work; I tried the radio, that didn't work either. The TV was the best distraction, and even then it only distracted me for a minute or two before this feeling of crisis came rushing back over me. What was going on? That is what kept running through my mind; the waiting was unbearable. I knew that it could not be good, but how bad was this going to be?

After three and half excruciatingly long hours my wife called to say that she was on the way. It was another twenty minutes before I heard her pull up and get out of her car. The "moment of truth" was here.

The human body is amazing; it reacts in so many different ways to protect itself when it is threatened, and my numbness after the first part of the conversation with my wife confirms that hypothesis.

When she walked in the door I hugged her and she hugged me back, but it was a distant hug. We sat down on the sofa facing each other and she began by saying that she was sorry for not speaking to me sooner. She told me that she had always been happy and that she was not looking for it. I asked her to please get to the point as I needed to know where our marriage was.

She said that she had met someone else. The words hit me hard, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. For the rest of the conversation I felt as if I was drowning; I was having trouble breathing as she said that she did not want to hurt me and that I had done nothing to deserve it, but it was clear to her that she needed to be free. I said that if she needed some space, and some time to think things through, I could understand that. I asked her what it was that had caused her to feel this way. I asked her what I had done and she told me that I had done nothing.

If I had done nothing then why was she doing this? She said that it was not that simple. She said that as soon as she had somewhere to go she wanted to move out. She didn't know where she would go yet, but she needed to be free and she needed it now. I was in a daze; I was not ready for this. My heart now racing, my mind was swirling, I felt crushed. I was desperately searching for something that would save the day. Problems I had expected, but this was a fait accompli and I was not prepared for this, it came out of left field, I didn't see it coming at all.

Who else knew? Had she spoken to anyone else? She said that she did not know for certain but felt that no one in our town knew. She kept repeating that she did not want to hurt me and that she was sorry but it didn't change how she felt.

My life was falling apart and I seemed powerless to do anything about it. Like most men I am geared to solve problems, indeed, that is what I do for a living, but in this instance I was powerless, or so it seemed. I was hyperventilating. Someone save me, I love this woman, she is my partner, why, how why, why, why?

My wife had to go to collect her daughter from school. How did she want to deal with tonight? When was she going to speak to her, what about her son, what was she going to tell him. These were matters that all needed to be dealt with right away. She said that for the time being she wanted us to live as normal until she was able to speak to them. I agreed. At least she would be with me for the time being; I don't think that I could have withstood an immediate separation.

I told her that I needed time to think, that this was more than I could handle in one go. I said that I needed to talk about it some more. She said that she understood and she was prepared to talk everything through with me, but I needed to accept the fact that she would be leaving me.

After my wife left I began to gather my thoughts and try to put things in perspective.

In most cases we, as human beings, pride ourselves when we are right. Yes, I had suspected that all was not right, but I thought that it was something that I could resolve. I knew better in this instance. I wished that I had been so wrong.

I had been married before and had already experienced divorce. Divorce is not a pretty thing and it is something that one does not want to experience, and never twice and yet, I was looking down the barrel of the divorce gun, once again. I felt, at least, that I had some inkling of what I was about to experience. Divorce is like a hurricane, you have to go through the storm before you get any calm in your life. I was in the early stages of the storm now.

I knew that I was going to need to reach out for help, I needed a safety net; separation from someone you love deeply is more easily done with the help of level minded people who can guide you. The question was who as my family lived in another part of the country and I could not think of any one locally?

I also knew that I needed to pull myself together. My wife and step daughter would be home soon.

Dinner came and went; it was all a blur, but finally it was time for bed.

After we got into bed I reached out and took my wife's hand. In some warped way I wanted her touch. I knew that she was going to leave, but I needed time to adjust. This was all happening too quickly for me. I wanted to talk some more, but did not know if I could withstand any more blows to the heart in one day, so I just lay there in silence.

Needless to say, I got very little sleep yet again; a couple of minutes here, a couple of minutes there. My life was in ruins. At least that is how I felt emotionally. I was still hyperventilating. But it was my emotional state which was in such turmoil and yet it is difficult to describe. I felt sick and yet I was not vomiting, I was absolutely drained physically and emotionally and yet I could not rest or sleep.

It was Thursday and I had several matters, at work, which I needed to deal with. I went into the office and tried to act as if everything was fine. Was I able to pull this off? Didn't anyone notice that I was in full emotional distress?

I struggled to get the most important things done. By this time it was two fifteen in the afternoon and I said that I was still not feeling well. I went home as I needed time to myself. I needed to think.

I went outside and sat on the patio. It was a beautiful day and I was thankful that, even for a brief moment, I was able to appreciate it. In some way nature has a calming effect on me and that moment in time helped clear my mind a little.

So what was I going to do about all this? My wife seemed quite adamant that she knew what she going to do. I needed to understand what had happened. She said that I had done nothing wrong. Was it that she found him to be fantastic in bed? Was he much bigger than I was? Did he have more stamina than me? He was twenty years younger than me, that much I deduced when she said that he was five years younger than her.

Was it that he had lots of money and could offer her a better lifestyle? With the children grown up she would not have to do school runs anymore and would be free to travel. Maybe that is what she meant when she said that she wanted to be free. She had her children in her early twenties and had never been able to travel. She always had the children to tie her down both physically and financially. Now she would be free of both those bonds. Perhaps she lumped me in as a bond as well. In other words she felt that she wanted a fresh start to life. Her children were starting, or about to start their own lives. Maybe she, by extension, was, in some way, experiencing her children's freedom, in her own life.

Whatever she was experiencing, she did not want me to be a part of it, but why? What could I do or say to help her see things differently? By her comments, my wife had made it clear that I did not have much time to persuade her that she was not thinking clearly.

This meant that I had even less time to figure out what was going on in her mind. In addition, I had to deal with the emotional impact that this was having on me simultaneously.

It was then that I realized that I was shaking. My breathing was shallow and I was shaking. What was this all about? Yes, I felt sick, my heart was pounding, I was taking shallow breaths, but why was I shaking? Was I in shock? Maybe that was it! I was in shock. My conversation with my wife was certainly shocking; the reality and the impact had been a terrible blow. I was shown a vision of my life, a life being changed in an instant.

I needed help, and I needed it quickly. But who could help me? I needed more than a friend to go and tell my sob story to. I needed someone who would be able to keep me grounded; someone who could listen to me and give me dispassionate answers, someone who had experienced this or was trained in this field, someone who's opinion that I would respect, but who?

I was still shaking; it just would not stop. I tried to take some deep breaths. Nothing seemed to be working. My wife would be home soon and I did not want her to see me in this state. I needed to concentrate, concentrate on who was going to be my first safety net.

We had half an hour before my wife was to collect her daughter from school. I still had lots of questions to which I needed answers. I needed to understand what was on her mind.

I asked her, "was he bigger than me, was he a great lover?" She said that she really did not think that was important, but I wanted to know. She refused to discuss it. She said that Jim made her feel appreciated as she had never been before. She said that she felt alive for the first time in her life.

I asked if she could explain what it was that Jim did that made her feel alive? She said that it was difficult to say, she couldn't say that it was anything particular, except that she just felt so different, she had never felt this way before. She said that there was nothing that I had done wrong; it was just that being with Jim was so different. I suggest that we go to counselling but she flatly refused saying that she was sorry but her mind was made up. She went on to say that she never intended to hurt me and was sorry to put me through this.

This was getting me nowhere. I cannot begin to describe the feelings of despair, frustration and the helplessness. I felt that I was falling into a deep hole and there was nothing that I could grab on to that would save me.

My wife left to pick up her daughter.

I was alone again as I felt myself spiraling down. I knew that this was not good; I had to get help. I had to decide on who I was going to. Nothing was making sense. Yes, I had been through a divorce before, but that was different. My former wife and I had grown apart and we both separated with that understanding. It was not pleasant, but it was nothing like this.

Again when we got into bed, I took my wife's hand. I was so tired and wanted sleep to come but it was eluding me. I loved my wife and was hurting badly. I was hurting from the fact that it seemed that I had lost the love of my wife and the fact that she had cheated on me.

I quietly cried in the dark as my wife drifted off to sleep.

I don't remember when I fell asleep, but I remember how quickly that sinking feeling came back to me the moment that I work up. I knew that, for the time being anyway, that my waking hours were going to terrible for the next few weeks, maybe months even.

On my way to work I pulled off the road and called a friend of mine who had gone through a divorce where she had cheated and walked out. He suggested that we get together at a coffee shop close to where we both worked.

We men are designed to solve problems, even during our most desperate hours that natural drive kicks in. My wife had made her position clear. She seemed very definite and I had to accept that. It was time to start to put my, now shattered, life back together.

We had been married for just over 15 years so how do I get out of this as whole as possible? She claims that she does not want anything except her freedom. I love it "her freedom", I didn't realize being married to me was that bad. "Opps", got to watch my thought process. I must not spiral into self-pity as that serves no purpose. Got to keep focused on the positive.

So, what is it that I want? What do I need to best come out of this? Time to write out the bullet points of a 'plan of action' that I could discuss with my friend over coffee.