Those are very kind things to say, all, but perhaps misdirected. I'm just being a selfish pr*ck.
Today is WAW's birthday, and last night (this morning?) I could hear her through the bedroom door doing that huff-puff thing you do when you're sort of half-hyperventilating and trying not to cry, so in I went -- neither sleep nor dreams for SP, a mixed blessing -- sat beside her on the bed, talked her off the ledge, stroked her hair, and kissed her forehead and sent her back to the arms of Morpheus.
Yes, I comfort WAW and hold WAW and let WAW cry on my shoulder.
But it's all selfish. Because I'm On My Path. I don't Hate. I don't Fear. I don't Resent. And I don't Leave. I Hold Up My End -- because she can take happiness, she can take marriage, she can take the kids' sense of home and hearth, but she can't take that.
That's what I declared in The Smiliest Manifesto, anyway; that's how I said I was going to pay it off, those years of lousy husbanding (and b.t.w. that's a great gerund, @alive), and that's how I was going to pay it forward. That's how I roll.
So now I have to live it, right? I knew it would cost me. I knew I'd be confronting the pain head-on -- that I'd be welcoming the pain, inviting it in for a drink, letting it wash over me, full-immersion baptism, born again and hallelujah.
Oye vatos -- okay, put up or shut up; money, meet mouth.
(Cue the Chairman of the Board): So. So and so and so, he said, drawing breath. So if I don't roll My Way in crisis, when it hurts the most to do it -- if I don't roll my Way even with the woman I love in my arms, head on my shoulder, her tears rolling down my neck, body pressed against mine and accept that she's leaving, that I'll never feel that body pressed against mine again forever, and still comfort her, still Do. My. Job, no matter what it costs me to do it -- then what use am I to myself at all?
So I thank you for the support and the compliments, but really at the end of the day it's just me, Jack Horner, sticking a thumb in a pie and saying, "What a good boy am I."
