Waking up this morning was physically painful. No husband snoring beside me, groaning as I hit the snooze. The severity of the situation hit me for about the thousandth time, and I realized that I really might not get back what we had.
I cannot help but wonder if he misses me. He said he feels free, but will that feeling pass? Are there moments when he's tired and his brain goes to auto-pilot and he thinks of me?
Before I went to bed last night, I found his "year books" from his time as a Marine. There was a book chronicling his graduation from boot camp, and then a book that tracked his involvement in Operation Enduring Freedom. In all the years we've been together, I've never looked at them. I never really asked to see them, and when we were younger, I didn't really care to hear about what he went through. I resented his life as a Marine and so I asked very little about it. Instead, I'd go on and on about college, and he'd listen. He'd help me move dorm rooms, take care of my friends when they needed help, and it was always him that visited me.
Years later, once we'd been married for a couple years, I'd try to talk about his military experience with him but by that time he never wanted to open up about it.
I realized last night how cruel I'd been. I looked at those books and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I hated myself for not being there for him when he was cold and lonely and so afraid. I hated that he'd been out there, young and frightened, and that when his friends were receiving letters from their girlfriends and wives, that he was receiving letters from his parents and my parents and my friends, but rarely from me. Why was I so stupid and proud?
Did his heart sink every time the mail came? Did he grow to hate me a little even as he loved me?
I begged God for a chance to start again, to be a loving person to him. For a chance to start again, to make him happy.
I'm so, so sorry, and I don't know that I can ever forgive myself. I certainly don't know if he can ever forgive me, or even care to believe that I'm capable of better. And if he can't, I fear I won't be able to live with myself.
I keep praying and praying that things will work out, but I'm terrified that they won't. I don't even know if I'm doing a 180 by going dark. The truth is that though I've been pursuing him since he left, and in a sense I've been pursuing him a bit more for the past 2 years, I was dark for much of our relationship.
In this case, is it wrong to drop the rope? Should I be trying to make up for all the other hundred times I ignored him and "got on with my life" during the long distance phases of our relationship?
