Wasting Your Life - Staying Together When Love Slips Away

Wasting Your Life - Staying Together When Love Slips Away
By Alexa Keating

It was 6:00 AM, again; time to start another day like the last day and every day. They rolled over and looked at each other; their eyes never meeting. Slowly, quietly and without fanfare, their love for each other had slipped away. Neither really saw the other. Their life was a routine.

She to get the children up, rush to make their breakfast and he to get dressed for work and drop them at the bus stop. There was talk, but little conversation. Just two adults seemingly programmed to perform the same tasks every day at the same time in the same house. As the door slammed and the house grew quiet, she began the daily process of cleaning up and getting dressed for her own job.

She was barely aware of the tears that fell from her eyes, dropping to the polished wood floors, shimmering like broken glass. She brushed them away; they were becoming more and more frequent and bothersome. Nothing had precipitated them; they just came every day now. She hurried to get dressed for work.

He dropped the children at the bus stop and maneuvered into the traffic, a daily routine so established he had begun to memorize the faces of the drivers of the cars he encountered. A long sigh escaped from him. He was tired, already. He had grown accustomed to feeling this way... trapped, helpless, maybe even hopeless. Sometimes he wondered what had happened, wondered when he had begun to stop dreaming about anything. He could vaguely remember being excited about approaching weekends, ball games, going shopping with his family... anything that used to be normal. It was gone. He didn't even know what was gone, but something was. The answer drifted into his mind, startling him out of the stupor he existed in these days. He simply did not care anymore.

It was necessary now to examine what he no longer cared about; not his children, not his job, not his friends. It was her, his wife. The growing realization that this was true was shocking to him. There was no big fight, nothing had really even changed. They had just slowly drifted apart, so far apart that he could barely remember being in love with her. It was shocking to acknowledge this. Their love had just slipped away; he knew they could not get it back. He knew he had to man up and say it out loud, to tell her; it was a sobering thought.

She walked into her office and closed the door quickly; her responses to the "Hello's" from her co-workers had grown clipped and unnatural. She knew she was becoming cynical; today she had realized why. The years had passed and passed, nothing had really changed, yet everything had changed. She sat in her chair and whispered to herself, "I don't want to spend any more of my life waiting to feel better, wishing things would get better, growing more and more jaded, just wasting year after year existing instead of living." She knew her life appeared perfect to many, yet she was miserable. So much so that she had grown accustomed to the tears that fell so frequently she explained them away as allergies.

They had a nice family, a nice home, a nice life. Yet there was no life there. She knew what she had to do; she knew it would cause so much upheaval and so many changes in her life and the children's lives. It was frightening, even though she saw the way out, she thought about turning around and going back to what she was planning on leaving. All those tears; she wondered if it wasn't a lot like trying to pour raindrops right back into the clouds they had fallen from; to what end? For more of the same, to look back and know that all those years had gone by just wasted; just doing time because she was afraid to make a change?

They had drifted so far apart that neither of them had wondered, for even a moment, if the other was feeling the same way. Their discussion that night was simple and straightforward. They were surprised that they both felt the same way, that there was nothing to even explain about how this had happened. They both understood precisely what had happened.

They sat down with the children, expecting an emotional meeting as they explained that they were divorcing and he was moving out. The two children sat quietly and unemotionally; the oldest finally commented out loud. "We thought you would have done that a couple of years ago."

The only real surprise was that they had not even been aware that all of their emotions, all of the love they had begun with had simply slipped away, never to be retrieved. All those years had gone by, just wasted.

Life is precious, they both acknowledged this; too precious to consciously accept a life devoid of love, shared joy or passion. Sometimes, letting go is the only available option. They began the arduous task of dismantling the fa�ade that had been their life. For them, holding on had caused the pain; letting go was the beginning of real healing.

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