That First Moment

Its been ten years, but I still remember that moment. I had been at work all day, and had just walked in the front door of the house my wife and I shared. The house was mostly empty. Whatever was hers or she thought she was entitled to had been moved out. The childrens' clothes and beds were gone.

Its that one moment when the full realization came to me that will be forever burned into my soul. A single moment that was filled with so much emotional agony that it scarred me. I couldn't breathe, and right then, I didn't want to breathe.

She had taken the kids and moved out. She must have started as soon as I left for work that morning, and done it all before I got home. That was one of the worst things about the whole situation. The fact that she had snuck out while I was at work, working to support her and the kids, done it behind my back, made the sudden impact of emotional hell ten times more severe.

For a few minutes, maybe longer, all I could do was sit there in the middle of the living room floor. I was breathing again, but in short, panicky gasps. Soon, I started crying. Seriously sobbing, while begging to the empty room, "No, please no, don't do this, please don't do this. No, no, no, no." I remember clearly what I was saying at that moment. I was pulling at my hair while I cried and pleaded.

After awhile, I started screaming. Lungful after lungful, screaming as hard as I could, trying to put every last bit of pain in each scream in a vain attempt to purge it. I screamed until I had no voice left.

I lost control of myself about then. I started breaking things. I turned the telephone stand into kindling with a claw hammer, swinging wildly, then walked down the hall putting holes in the walls. I found a set of antique plates that she had left behind, and broke each plate one by one. Finally, I took a few swings at the washing machine and the dryer. Finally, after swinging the hammer with all the pain behind it for over an hour, I was exhausted, dripping with sweat. I don't know how many pieces of furniture I had broken up or torn apart. The house looked like a construction zone.

But I was still hurting inside just as much or more as when I started. I laid on the bed, our bed, not moving, not knowing what to do, and at the same time knowing there was nothing I could do. For hours, I just cried and cried.

I didn't sleep that night, hoping to hear her car in the driveway, knowing I wouldn't. For weeks afterward, everytime I heard a car in the driveway, or even on the road driving past, I would want so badly for it to be her, coming home. But she never came home.

What I felt that day, when I came home to an empty house, was an emotional hell so complete, so intense, that even now I don't think I've described the full measure of it. It can't be put into words. And every night after that, coming home to the same empty house, it all started again.

My friend Kerry came out to stay for a few days. I hadn't cleaned up the house, and he was shocked at the amount of destruction I had done. He called his girlfriend, and she came over, and they cleaned my house for me. I didn't care. I didn't help them. I wasn't ready to start putting things back together.

What I went through that day, emotionally, left me with so much rage and bitterness and frustration inside. For eight years, I carried that rage, I carried that bitterness, and I carried that frustration. Eight years of feeling like I was dead somewhere inside me. Eight years of wishing I could inflict on her the hell she had inflicted on me, knowing that I wouldn't even if I could. And that has left a mark on my soul, on who I am, that can never be fixed.

"But its been fourteen years of silence
Its been fourteen years of pain
Its been fourteen years that are gone forever
And I'll never have again"
Guns N' Roses