The Letter My Ex-Husband Never Wrote

 

Sometimes I find it healing 

to dream into what someone in our lives

might have said to us during a trying time...

if they could articulate language enough 

to speak a likely reality...

My ex-husband left permanently in 1986 

without ever expressing why, 

nor that he was unhappy,

nor that anything was wrong.

We made love the night before he left.

In all these years since 

he never offered an explanation 

nor an apology. 

In January 2020, pre-pandemic... 

I wrote this to myself

as if he had written it to me

to try to heal a gaping wound 

that never quite healed on its own.

Dear Erin,

    I know all these years, I have owed you an explanation of why I suddenly got an apartment without consulting you about my wants and needs and instead exited our marriage, as if sideways through an escape hatch, instead of confiding in you as my trusted partner. 

    Truth be told I did not know what I needed or wanted in those moments. Some part of life was too difficult for me to process within our relationship and family unit with you. I only knew I had to leave, and barely did.

    I needed time away from the known patterns in our home to see me and know me.  I was lost to myself, and I did not know why. 

    I had invested in being the man you saw me as being. I was towing a hard line to measure up to that princely image, a much greater, more eloquent version of me with no faults – and no desire to smoke or fuck other women. No aching craving desire to have you as you were my lover in your pre-pregnancy body when you were thin and athletic and rested and intensely expressive of goodness not suffering through ill health tending to a child, not me.  

     I felt lost in a union I could not find myself in at all.  I was overwhelmed.

How could I tell you I got repulsed by the scent of sweaty goats from your pores – such an overwhelmingly pungent scent of wild animal so unlike the mild aromatic scent of you as a ripe woman that drew me toward you with such compelling chemistry I had to make a child with you. 

    And yet once I did, I was perfectly aligned with our child, yet no longer drawn to you. I could not reconcile this in my head nor heart. I had to leave to gain my balance.

    I am sorry it has taken me this long to come clean with you about my leaving and causing you so much pain and confusion in wondering what you did wrong.

    I am sorry for not simply speaking my truth at the time.

            Sincerely,

                    Jim B.