You Want to Know Why? I'll Tell You Why...

X calls from time to time to check up on guy and I. He even shared with me how his Bishop's interview went. For a while I thought I could use his help with watching Guy. Knowing that I no longer had daycare benefits, I figured he could do me the favor of watching him a couple days of the week for me.

I left Guy with him one day and he was fine, as I knew he would be. Then X moved and he does not have a phone now, but he has called from work occasionally. One time I was talking to Paul in the wee hours of the morning and I get another call coming through. I didn't know who it was because X uses a calling card, so it's a different # each time. I figured I better see who it was. It was X. He didn't expect me to answer, but he felt the urge to call me to tell me about the experience he just had at work. He works the grave yard shift in a bodily waste disposal, and I don't mean a sewer plant. They actually incinerate bodies/body parts, human and animal. It is a grim job, but one adjusts, or something.

He told me how he became disturbed when down the conveyer belt, in a crate came a dead baby. It tore him up inside to think about how a little life was wasted. It humbled him, when he thought about the way he broke up our family.

He appologized for calling so late and let me go. He called the next day and appologized again. Then he told me how he continues to think about us getting back together. He is lonely and his appartment is too big for just himself. He is uninterested in going to the Single's ward although his Bishop and his apartment manager have encouraged him to do so.

He shared another experience with me that he had last summer while he was with his girlfriend. They were at some art fair or some event where they had a palm reader. X decided to have his palm read. The two of them went into the tent. When the palm reader looked into his had, she asked if she could speak to him alone and excused his girlfriend. She told him that his girlfriend is not his true love. She said that he once had his true love and he still longs for her.

He interpreted that to mean that I was his true love that he has lost. But she's the one he had tatooed in color the whole length of his forearm! Doesn't that indicate true love?! hehe

The point of his call was to find out if I felt that there was any chance of us getting back together because he has been going around with it his mind. I told him that I did not feel that there was any chance of that happening. I could hear the disappointment in his voice.

The only reason he remembers that I left him for was that he decided to leave the church. He told me about a couple that he knew in one of his wards growing up. The wife became inactive for a time, but he was confident that she would come back, and eventually she did. He wished that we could have been like them. I told him he is fortunate to have forgotten everything that happened to cause our break up.

The truth was that when he called me from his art studio in the middle of the night to tell me that he wanted to become a vegitarian and practice worship in the Native American way by smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol, yes I told him that I would leave him if he decided to leave the church. I said it as more of a threat, hoping that he might change his mind and stick it out. Of course that didn't happen.

Instead it was me who gave in. I remember raking leaves in the yard thinking to myself what I should do. Do I leave him to be thrown back into the lds dating pool of YA dances and firesides? Only, this time I would have a handicap, I would be stamped- DESPERATE DIVORCED SINGLE MOTHER. That thought alone kept me from packing my bags any time soon. I dreaded the single scene the first round, how could I bare it again with the scarlet letters DM?

No, I will stick it out with X, I told myself. I chose to marry him and I am going to stand by my choice. So what if there are times that I want to kill him, if he were only here long enough for me to poison him. At least then, if I got away with it I would only be a widdow rather than a divorcee. I made the choice to stay, or at least I hadn't made the choice to leave, yet. Maybe it was the phone call the next night where he woke up in a sweat after having a dream that I left him and he was miserable.

Even thought he had gone through 3 jobs in the first four months we lived there and sacrificed the rent money on our house to buy a shed in the back yard for him to paint in so he can be a full time artist. And sacrificed it again when he rented a studio in Bountiful. The rent for his studio was always paid, but the rent on the house was a few months behind. The utilities were all on the verge of being shut off and the phone already was for a few weeks before I left. There was darn little food in the house except for some expired boxes of scalloped potatoes that were given to us. I was left at home with a new baby with an ear infection that I had to take on the bus to the Dr. and carried about a mile to walk home. If we had enough change, I could take the laundry in the stroller through the snow to the laundrymat. If we didn't have the change, I did laundry in the bathtub. I don't recommend it to pregnant mothers in their last term or within a month after giving birth. There were three days where I was sick with what may have been food poisoning. I could not consume anything without immediately throwing it up, including water. I could not produce milk to nurse my son and he refused to take the bottle. I thought I was on my death bed. I figured no one would even know for a few days if I did die. X did not come home the whole time I was sick. He called once a day and I told him I was sick but he didn't bother to come home to try to help me. Besides, our conversations usually ended with a hangup. There wasn't a day I didn't break down in tears. But I was going to stick by my man....

Actually, after he told me that he was going to leave the church and I was willing to accept it, we even bonded a little bit. He traded a painted for several free haircuts at a beauty salon, so he sent me there to get a new hair do that he designed for me. It was two toned, purple and platinum.

It wasn't until Valentines Day when I took him out to a 24 hour Mexican restaurant with some money that I had stashed away from sewing patches on letterman jackets, that I finally made the decision to leave him. We didn't say much through dinner and when we got home, he let me out of the car and kept his distance from me, and prepared to take off again. We used to kiss upon greeting and departing. I called him on it and I said to him, "You never touch me anymore." He became self-conscious and said, "Well tell the neighbors, why don't you?"

So I yelled, out loud, "YOU NEVER TOUCH ME ANYMORE!!" Then he begins walking inside to finish our conversation in private. He told me that since his dream that I left him, in his mind it had already happened. I figured if I was already a ghost, why was I hanging around? I told him I will be calling my parents the next day and I will be gone as soon as possible. He didn't argue with me and he went on his way.

*And THAT, Dear X is the reason I left you.*

I mentioned briefly to him a few of the situations above to help him understand that I really had no choice but to leave him as a matter of survival.

He seemed to think that I should be able to forgive and forget what has happened in the past. I believe I have forgiven him and I try every day to forget, but that doesn't mean I need to subject myself to that again. Even if he has changed since then, it's not enough. It would be too painful for me because I know those memories would come flooding back. Now that I have the choice to make over again I say, "No, thanks."

Even after all that, he accused me of being fearful of how my parents would react to us getting back together, which granted would not be a pretty sight, but it was only a small fraction of the influences in my decision.