Highway to Hell

R keeps urging me to write my feelings out but the things I say about him might be hurtful. I might pay for those words with a withdrawal of his affection or a change in our relationship. Sometimes I feel I am at a disadvantage if he knows my true feelings. I am allowing him to peek inside my soul but I am fed silence on his end. I don’t have the same opportunity.

He doesn’t feel compelled to write about me or to make his feelings public knowledge.

Maybe he can shelf me, and obviously separate that from his real life.

I’m not physically there to demand anything or to have a breakdown when things go wrong for me.

I’m not there to ask him what time he wants to have dinner.

I’m not there to make mistakes that he has to fix. I’m not there to need help solving a problem or his words to soothe me when I’m suffering or afraid.

I’m just plain old not there. I’m not saying I’m free and available and I’m not blaming. It is the hard truth.

I understand where I rank in his life, if you will. I KNOW my place and my status, but that doesn’t keep the fact that I’m not in the running from hurting.

A few weeks ago, I was having issues with my old car, a car that really should be replaced if we are being honest. I had driven to see R, and had almost made it there when the problem arose. I needed new spark plugs and wires, but I didn’t know that at the time.

The problem had just presented itself and I was struggling to keep the engine from idling too slow and cutting out. Every time I put my foot on the brake, my car would sputter and chug. The only problem I really had with this was that to get home, I would be pulling out on a very busy road and stalling would most certainly result in an accident.

I have been around cars my whole life and I know how to keep my engine running by utilizing my brake and gas simultaneously.  I learned it by driving a car with a manual transmission…or a go cart…can’t remember which but the fact is, I can do it! But THAT doesn’t mean my car is gonna STAY running once I’m ON the freeway.

I was plenty afraid and nervous because nightfall was approaching and I was about to be enveloped in the darkness of a Michigan evening, headed East on the highway to hell in a 2009 Pontiac handcart.

So, as my lover and I sat in our cars in the parking lot of the place we had met, I was feeling a rising panic and fear, and he was well aware that I was about to be in a vulnerable position that would put me one step away from a bad situation.

As I looked to him for advice or a solution or even just help or concern, I saw him nervously glancing at his phone, repeatedly.

His wife was texting. He was anxious to leave because my time was over.

His parting words to me were….

“I feel really bad leaving you like this, but I have to.”

And then, he did just that.

He left me in the dark, in the rain, vulnerable. He drove away and left me there, afraid and alone and a long way from home and from anyone that loved me enough to come pick my broke ass up off the side of the road. Where I come from we don’t call a tow truck, we call so and so’s cousin who has a tow strap and they come and tow you home for a six pack and a quarter ounce of weed.

I maybe had six bucks in my pocket, and I was wearing high heeled boots and a short skirt in 35 degree weather when it dawned on me that I’m as stupid as stupid comes, putting myself at risk for a man that drove away from me when he should have at least followed me five miles to see that I made it onto the freeway and towards home.

But he didn’t.

Because leaving me in that state was preferable to upsetting his ungrateful bitch of a wife.

My safety was not worth the ten minutes it would have taken him to give a shit. It was not worth risking her questions…ten fucking minutes.

He would NEVER leave her in that position. But I’M the one rubbing his feet and cutting his toenails like his little fucking Geisha?.

I didn’t hear from him again until well past midnight, when he texted me to say goodnight.

He never asked if I made it home.

But I DID make it home, if you wanna call it that. It’s hard to call it home and when the OTHER guy that doesnt give a fuck about you lives there with you.

Yup. I made it home because I’m a bad ass bitch that doesn’t need a man to love me and care about my safety.

Which is a good thing.

Because I still ain’t found one that will.