"Sorry," is all that you can't say

I came home weary from traveling to NYC for a work conference but I was ecstatic to get back to Nick and me, the way we were before he was hospitalized. I couldn't wait for text messages and photo sharing and talks without people listening in a hallway and most of all for FaceTime.

None of that happened.

On Tuesday evening after getting home early Tuesday morning and feeling something was off all day during our usual evening phone call I had to ask. "Are we okay, are you okay?"  I didn't expect the answer.

I didn't expect this. Not in the way you don't expect your car to breakdown.  I drive around acutely aware that my Subaru can break down (and does) at any moment.  This was the kind of unexpected like you don't expect the sky to fall.

I believed Nick each time he reiterated how he'd never leave me, never give up on us, never divorce me unless I did something unforgivable.

He said "no." I said "what's going on? Do you still want to do this?" I wanted him and expected him to tell me how absurd my question was.  Instead he said "I don't."

So without telling about how I got through sleepless nights of a deployment where his life was in danger often and telling you how I planned to be there come hell or high water (including delayed flights, a flat tire on my rental, waiting for a key to his house to come in the mail from Iraq) and how that weekend I got him from the airport and was in his arms again he planned the most surprise and beautiful heartfelt proposal on the beach in the moonlight with the most glittering and beautiful ring that meant the world to me, without telling you all that I'm here now.

I'm where I never wanted and never thought I'd be.

I never got a real explanation, it was a flurry of doubt, protecting me from himself/finding himself/you never did anything wrong I just wasn't happy anymore/the distance couldn't work anymore.  I asked for a face to face conversation (via Face Time) to try and accept what he was telling me and I didn't get that either.

What hurts more than all of that is that he never told me he was sorry.  He told other people he feels sorry, feels guilty.  But when I confronted him via text (because it was my only choice) about how I just wanted him to apologize, well that was the final word between us.  He never wrote back. Not even just two words.

Of course I'm left with one hundred thousand other words. Words that I don't know if he meant but then couldn't mean anymore, or was just pretending the whole time. iMessages, letters, notes, cards, inserts from flowers, a diamond ring, gifts, hundreds of song lyrics that he picked just for me to listen to, poems he'd find and send, words words words words words words words.


title from my girl Tracy Chapman: Baby, can I hold you.