Baby, better come back, maybe next week. Can’t you see I’m on a losing streak?

My mind won’t let me sleep and the tears won’t stop.

I decided to clean my desk off while I tried to watch a show on t.v. and I found a piece of paper. It was filled with words, like notes a student would take for a history exam, and it was in my handwriting. It was penned on the back of a piece of mail dated August 2021.

It was around the time that Roger had sent me a text meant for Vickie, who I now know was the lover I had caught him seeing months earlier that he promised he had gotten rid of. He even made a big show of making me look at the texts he sent her, to prove that he had told her he loved someone else…Me.

So she knew all along he was in love with someone but she didn’t care. She thought she could take him from me.

And she did. So, how did he “love” me and cheat with the same person not once but twice for over a year and a half? Was he building a relationship with her and phasing me out, yet keeping me on a LONG string? Yes he was.

All the words that I furiously scribbled the night of his betrayal WERE an attempt to sort it all out, to see a pattern or find a reason for his sudden and complete change. Now, as I read the unorganized thoughts and jumbled words born of my racing mind that night, I know exactly what was wrong.

Drugs.

Below are the frantic thoughts I wrote on the paper that day…exactly how they looked.

*Everything has changed

*You have never hurt me like this before

*Always felt loved, never like this

*I’m last for a reason

*You lie for a reason

*You avoid me for a reason

*You forget to call for a reason

*You’re always late for a reason

*You don’t spend time with me anymore for a reason

*You have totally abandoned me for a reason

*You abruptly stopped loving me and caring about my feelings, for a reason

*I DON’T KNOW THE REASON

*You lose hours of time

*You have time unaccounted for

*You can’t tell me where you were or why you didn’t call for days

*You are secretive and withdrawn

*You shut me out

*You are irritated with me

*If I try to tell you my feelings you mock me or get angry and punishing

*Why do you hurt me baby

*You’ve lost interest in plenty of other things before, but never me

*My feelings haven’t changed

*I fear yours have

*You text me at 3:00 a.m.

*You never sleep

*You don’t do your best at work anymore

*I have to nag you to call

*You treat me like you don’t love me

*Baby why don’t you love me anymore

*What did I do.

*You left me alone and I still love you and I didn’t know you were leaving.

*I never got to kiss you Goodbye but you didn’t need me to.

*So it doesn’t really matter.

That’s it. The words came from my mind and they only make sense to me.

Reading the words made me relive the anguish I felt when I wrote them.

I’m so sad that my lover hurts enough to try to fill the void with a drug that is killing him and I’m so sad that I can’t save my baby.

Finally saying I can’t do it anymore is proving to be the hardest conviction I’ve ever had to stick to. I’ve been doing this for 15 months, trying to save my relationship with Roger and find out what was destroying it. 15 months. Since January of 2021. That means my baby has been using drugs for over a year. I’m so scared I’m going to lose him if he doesn’t go to some form of rehab.

I was finally getting my lover back and he was gaining sobriety, but I fear he slipped and relapsed last weekend. I feel it in my heart and I hope I’m wrong. He’s also back in his marriage and more (willingly) trapped than ever AND his lover is in contact with him. Meanwhile, I can’t call cuz I’ll piss them both off. Yeah, do THAT math and figure out who gets fucked. That’s right, ME.

There was never going to be room for me. I’m like the cigarette you keep in your drawer so you can continue to stay nicotine free, knowing you can smoke it if you run out of willpower.

He was never going to leave his wife to be with me and he brags about me having stayed with him for 15 years, even after he told me outright more than once that I’d never be his partner outside of the motel bedroom.

He doesn’t give a damn about anything anymore. He chuckled when he told me he got “canned” from a prestigious and well earned job where he should have retired a golden boy and went out with a bang and a pocket full of money. Instead, it’s gonna end worse than it is right now because rock bottom is yet to come. If you can lose your wife, health, girlfriend, sexual ability, sanity and self respect and still say smugly that you got shit canned at 67 rather than having retired or resigned, you ain’t at rock bottom.

The Roger I know would never allow that kind of departure from his long career in community service, where he has helped millions of low income people have homes they could afford. But he didn’t just do that, he made those homes beautiful for the less fortunate, when he could have been designing and building high end homes in nice neighborhoods making bank. Instead, he used his gift and ability to better other people’s lives. Now HIS own sucks. This is the man I love and I just want him to not be miserable and sad and crying all the time. I can’t watch him KILL himself with drugs OR by staying in his horrible marriage. Both will make him sick unless his wife can change for the better and he can get help.

He always said if she started to put out sexually to keep him, it would be too little too late. He lied. They have tons of sex according to her. And he’s right where she wants him. Just wtf? Was ANYTHING he told me true??

I’m taking a stand to prove my worth.

But at the same time, I feel totally worthless.

All of this has made me realize that it’s time to make peace.

With all my broken pieces.