28.6%

I've always been under the impression, false but reassuring, that people are genuinely good down deep despite any superficial scornful words or hurtful actions to others. I've now arrived at the terminal of realization and have been forced to check my bags at the gate. Humans are nothing more and nothing less than animals, innately territorial, carnal beasts that will typically perform perfunctory obligations out of habit and most likely self-protect and self-satisfy above all other emotions.

I devoted 12 years of my life to your happiness, your comfort, your peace, your concerns, your needs, your life, to you. To you. All without any expectations or demand for anything in return. And, yes, I did this willingly and typically with a smile on my face, lipstick on my face and a 3 course dinner in the oven. I put my my life on hold, boxed it up and placed it on a shelf somewhere in the recesses of a storage unit to which I'd lapsed on monthly payments so as never to recoup its belongings. No ring, no kids, no name on the deed, no requests, no complaints.

I raised your child from potty training to teeth brushing to spelling bees to algebra homework to "the talk". He called me mom. I called him son. I left once and then you cunningly lured me back with rotten bait on the end of a rusty fishing rod. And I took it, like a withering minnow in a cloudy stream grasping at the daylight. I took the trash out every Friday, I cooked almost every night, I painted walls, I cleaned, I cut the grass, I rubbed your back before ever thinking about my aching legs from working a full day, I decorated every holiday, I built a home out of a house, a home for a family I thought we were.

And you, you drank it in, you soaked it up, you writhed in it, you said the words I needed to hear to stay, you fawned appreciation, you forced the smile in the family photos, you allowed me...no...you encouraged me to put all my hopes and dreams into a bottomless basket of a forgery. And you did that willingly. You did it masterfully, skillfully and without any regrets or remorse.

It's not clear yet to me how I was so blinded, so jaded by life, so beaten down by my own self doubt that I could fall for it. But I am clear on one thing, everything I did was done out of compassion, out of genuine kindness. I gave more than any human should ever be able to give and with nothing in return. No doubt I have my faults, my own demons that reared their hideous voices from time to time, but isn't that part of us all. I took your own screaming demons, tamed them and even fed them I suppose. Mine were used against me day in and day out, never to be left out of any battle and used as guided weapons.

Now it's all in the open, you left me long before you told me to leave. You had her, my understudy, waiting in the wings while you found a way to close our last act. And I'm only the wiser now which may be too late to really matter. Where was the decency? It would have been kinder to simply say goodbye years before you stole a decade of my time, a decade of my efforts, of my care. I refuse to say a decade of my 'love' because hindsight is 20/20 and I know now it was most certainly not that four letter word that I've refused to utter for a while now and likely forever. Where was the mercy? I'm a human being. I'm a human being that took care of you everyday, of you, and of your son. I would say you broke my heart but I'll never give you that satisfaction. You'll never be able to steal away what should never have been given to you in the first place.

You made a mockery of my life. My life was built on our supposed family. My life was framed by your child and mine. My life was you and our home. My life was dedicated tenfold to giving you what you'd said you'd never been granted as a child. My life was, all things considered, now only something that can only be deemed a lie, a farce, an act all of its own, a secret twist, a cruel, sadistic and manipulative twist. I spent 12 years playing a role you not only created, scripted and directed but invented and I wasn't told I was my own foil until after the curtain closed.

And now it's over and I'm not bitter, I'm not sad, I'm not angry, I'm not anything. I'm numb, null and void maybe, devoid of any extreme. It doesn't hurt like I thought it would. It feels empty. I suppose that's because for 12 years I taught myself to not feel, it was easier to stay that way. I taught myself to smile and nod, to put my armor on tightly and my blinders on with crazy glue.

So now the course is unpaved and I like it that way. Gravel and dirt roads were always more my thing. I've always felt more at home in the unknown and that's my new normal. And I kind of love it here. So 12 years, 28.6% of my life so far sounds like a lot but I like to play the odds and I'm quite good at the long game so I'll take it as a blip on my radar map of beginnings and endings. It will exist only as a tiny red dot in my field of bright cobalt blue, super ferocious orange, peaceful periwinkle and fabulous fuchsia blips of better moments and brighter memories that will mean so much more than you could ever calculate.

Maybe I'm not meant to be in love, or maybe I really am just the placeholder not designed to be the 'one' who a man will fall madly on love with. And I'm ok with that because whatever it is I'm meant to be is a universe more than you could ever hope to have again. People don't get that lucky twice. Please do not for a moment think you have ruined my ideals of love or that you've made me into a sad, lonely, heart-crippled soul. On the contrary, you've given me 12 years of a journey through my own Everest, trekking through the rugged paths of my own heart's tortures and celebrations learning how to navigate the terrain of breaks, aches and healings. And I can walk away now proud of never failing you, of never failing myself, of never failing your son. I can continue on my trek because I am not at all ill-equipped to guide myself forward. And on the other side lies another mountain I'll gladly climb with fueled anticipation and learned aspirations that will push me up to its peak and on to the next.